Egypt removes reservation on banning marriage of minors in African agreement

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has issued a presidential decree removing Egypt’s reservation on an article in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child adopted in 1990, which bans child marriage.

The decision was issued in February but was only announced in the Egyptian Gazette on Thursday.

The article states that marriage and engagement are prohibited for minors of both genders under the age of 18 and that effective measures have to be taken to determine 18 as the minimum age for marriage.

Despite it being illegal, the marriage of underage girls is still a widespread phenomenon in Egypt — especially in rural areas. Statistics released in 2010 by a think tank linked to Egypt’s Cabinet revealed that 29 percent of marriages the previous year involved a minor, constituting 153,000 cases in one year.

The Egyptian Child Law passed in 2008 prohibits the documentation of marriage for people under 18 years of age; while Egypt signed the African Charter in 2001 — at a time when Egyptian law had set the minimum age for marriage at 18 for males and 16 for females.

However, amid a lack of accountability, religious clerics licensed to officiate marriages manage to find leeway around the law and continue to perform marriages for under-age couples.

Some clerics resort to marrying under-age girls with unofficial documents. Others simply change the date of birth in the marriage certificate.

Last July, the Interior Ministry announced that it had uncovered 12 cases of under-age marriage in one month.

In 2010, in the case of the marriage of a minor a criminal court convicted a broker, a Saudi businessman, a lawyer and the victim’s parents of sexual abuse of a child. The parents were given a suspended sentence of one year in prison, the lawyer was sentenced to two years, while the Saudi man and the broker were sentenced in absentia to 10 years each.

The broker and lawyer had facilitated the marriage of the Saudi man to a 14-year-old, whose parents were paid LE10,000.