VAD ÄR EN FLICKA VÄRD? En internationell studie om minimiålder för barnäktenskap

Abstract

Every day there are approximately 39 000 girls worldwide who marry against their will, before the age of 18. With 24 hours in a day that equals 1 625 girls an hour, 27 each minute. Within the year over 14 million girls will enter into child marriage. Child marriage causes individual suffering, national economic distress and global violation of the human rights. Due to its vast extent and devastating effects child marriage is a pressing global concern. Despite this, research on how to prevent the phenomenon is meagre. One solution that is frequently presented is that of instituted national legislation of minimum age of marriage of 18 years. Considering the lack of research there is a need to analyse how legislation as such has an effect on the proportion of child marriage. The following research paper uses a statistical regression model to investigate said relationship on a global scale. It also takes into consideration several other important factors which may affect the proportion of child marriage. The analysis does not find any statistically significant effects of legislated minimum age of marriage on the proportion of child marriage, hence the legislation has no effect. However, since no superior solution has been presented and there are no indications that legislate minimum age of marriage of 18 years exacerbates the situation the legislation is still preferable until a better solution presents itself. Furthermore, data is most likely underrepresented, possibly causing the effects to be weaker than anticipated.