Monday, December 21, 2015
Guatemala’s Congress just voted to raise the country’s minimum legal age for marriage to 18! This is big, exciting, news. Not just for girls in Guatemala, but for all the girls forced into child marriage—every two seconds—around the world.
Before the congressional vote on November 5 girls in Guatemala could get married at 14 and boys at 16. The new law not only works to protect young girls often pressured or forced into marriage, but also closes the gender gap by holding girls and boys to the same age standard.
As one Congressman said, the new law, “breaks with a mistaken tradition,” and will hopefully work to prevent child trafficking and teen pregnancies.
