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Child marriage in armed conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2020

Dyan Mazurana ,
Anastasia Marshak  and
Kinsey Spears
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Abstract

Eradicating and addressing child marriage in situations of armed conflict requires that stakeholders increase their attention, knowledge, evidence-based protection measures, and resources in a coordinated fashion. To this end, this article examines what constitutes child marriage within the international legal framework. It then presents a concise analysis of what is known about child marriage in development contexts, before moving on to discuss the (limited) state of knowledge on child marriage in humanitarian settings, and the global response. It presents information on different married child populations, including child brides and grooms, girls forcibly married to armed actors, child widows, and child marriage within natural disasters. It concludes with ideas on the information and knowledge that is still needed to inform effective response.

Keywords

childrenchild marriageforced marriagehumanitarian settingsarmed conflictgendersexual and gender-based violence
Type
Legal protections for children
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 101 , Issue 911: Children and war , August 2019 , pp. 575 - 601
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2020

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References

1 For a thorough review of case law regarding sexual violence during armed conflict, see Gloria Gaggioli, “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts: A Violation of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 96, No. 894, 2014. The landmark early publication on children, armed conflict and violence, including sexual violence, is Graca Machel, The Impact of War on Children, UNICEF, New York, 1996. For a recent review of sexual violence against children in conflict see Save the Children, Unspeakable Crimes: Sexual Violence against Children in Conflict, 2013, available at: https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/library/unspeakable-crimes-against-children-sexual-violence-against-children (all internet references were accessed in March 2020).

2 See, among others, Amin, A., “Preventing Violence Against Adolescent Girls: What Works?”, WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research, presented at “3rd International Day of the Girl Child – Empowering Girls: Breaking the Cycle of Violence”, WHO, Geneva, 2014Google Scholar; Jain, Saranga and Kurz, Kathleen, New Insights on Preventing Child Marriage: A Global Analysis of Factors and Programs, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Washington, DC, 2007Google Scholar; Klugman, Jeni et al. , Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malhotra, Amju, Warner, Ann, McGonagle, Allison and Lee-Rife, Susan, Solutions to End Child Marriage: What the Evidence Shows, ICRW, Washington, DC, 2011Google Scholar; Nour, Nawal M., “Child Marriage: A Silent Health and Human Rights Issue”, Review of Obstetric Gynecology, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009Google ScholarPubMed.

3 Melissa Conrad Stöppler, “Puberty First Signs, Symptoms, Ages, and Stages in Girls and Boys”, MedicineNet, available at: www.medicinenet.com/puberty/article.htm.

4 Linda Patia Spear, “The Adolescent Brain and Age-Related Behavioral Manifestations,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2000; Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Suparna Choudhury, “Development of the Adolescent Brain: Implications for Executive Function and Social Cognition”, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 47, No. 3–4, 2006.

5 Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry, Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement, Oxford and New York, Berghahn Books, 2004.

6 See the article by Ahmed Al-Dawoody and Vanessa Murphy in this issue of the Review.

7 Ibid.

8 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1577 UNTS 3, 20 November 1989, p. 3, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b38f0.html.

9 See the ICRC Treaty Database, available at: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=540.

10 “Children in Adult Jails”, The Economist, 28 March 2015, available at: www.economist.com/united-states/2015/03/28/children-in-adult-jails.

11 Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 4, “Adolescent Health and Development in the Context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”, UN Doc. CRC/GC/2004/4, 2004, para. 16.

12 Committee on the Rights of the Child and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), “Joint General Recommendation/General Comment No. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and No. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on Harmful Practices”, UN Doc. CEDAW/C/GC/31/CRC/C/GC/18, New York, 2014, para. 20, available at: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/TBSearch.aspx?SymbolNo=CEDAW/C/GC/31/CRC/C/GC/18.

13 For a comprehensive review and analysis of the development of crimes of sexual violence within international humanitarian and human rights law, see G. Gaggioli, above note 1.

14 Ruth Gaffney-Rhys, “International Law as an Instrument to Combat Child Marriage”, International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2011.

15 Etienne G. Krug et al. (eds). World Report on Violence and Health, WHO, Geneva, 2002, p. 149, available at: www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/chap6.pdf.

16 CRC, Art. 19.

17 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, UN Doc. A/RES/54/263, 16 March 2001, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b38bc.html.

18 See G. Gaggioli, above note 1.

19 ICRC, Commentary on the First Geneva Convention: Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, 2nd ed., Geneva, 2016, paras 696–707, available at: https://tinyurl.com/uekn98m.

20 Protocol Additional (II) to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts1125 UNTS 609, 8 June 1977 (entered into force 7 December 1978), Art. 4(2)(e). The lack of rigour and application of law to adequately address sexual crimes during conflict, particularly prior to the development of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, has been sharply critiqued: see, for example, Judith Gardam and Michelle J. Jarvis, Women, Armed Conflict and International Law, Kluwer Law International, The Hague, 2001; Judith Gardam and Ustinia Dolgopol (eds), The Challenge of Conflict: International Law Responds, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 2006.

21 Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck (eds), Customary International Humanitarian Law, Vol. 1: Rules, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, Rule 93, available at: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule93.

22 ICTR, The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4, Judgment (Trial Chamber), 2 September 1998, para. 688; ICTR, The Prosecutor v. Alfred Musema, Case No. ICTR-96-13, Judgment (Trial Chamber), 27 January 2000, para. 965.

23 ICTR, Akayesu, above note 22, para. 688.

24 Ibid.

25 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (last amended 2010), 17 July 1998, Arts 7(1)(g), 8(2)(b)(xxii), 8(2)(e)(vi), available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3a84.html.

26 Morten Bergsmo, Alf Butenschon Skre and Elisabeth Jean Wood (eds), Understanding and Proving International Sex Crimes, Torkel Opsahl Academic Publisher, Beijing, 2012. There remains a significant need to make visible and address crimes of sexual violence against sexual minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, in armed conflicts and humanitarian emergencies: see also Chris Dolan, “Letting Go of the Gender Binary: Charting New Pathways for Humanitarian Interventions on Gender-based Violence”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 96, No. 894, 2015.

27 UNSC Res. 1612, UN Doc. S/RES/1612, 26 July 2005, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/43f308d6c.html.

28 UNSC Res. 1882, UN Doc. S/RES/1882, 4 August 2009, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/4a7bdb432.html.

29 Human Rights Council Res. 7/29, 28 March 2008, available at: https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A_HRC_RES_7_29.pdf.

30 UNSC Res. 1325, UN Doc. S/RES/1325, 31 October 2000, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f4672e.html.

31 UNSC Res. 1820, UN Doc. S/RES/1820, 19 June 2008, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/485bbca72.html.

32 UNSC Res. 1888, UN Doc. S/RES/1888, 30 September 2009, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/4ac9aa152.html.

33 UNSC Res. 1889, UN Doc. S/RES/1889, 5 October 2009, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/4acdd8512.html.

34 UNSC Res. 134, UN Doc. S/RES/134, 1 April 1960, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1893c.html.

35 UNSC Res. 2106, UN Doc. S/RES/2106, 24 June 2013, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/51d6b5e64.html.

36 UNSC Res. 2122, UN Doc. S/RES/2122, 18 October 2013, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/528365a44.html.

37 UNSC Res. 2242, UN Doc. S/RES/2242, 13 October 2015.

38 UNSC Res. 2467, UN Doc. S/RES/2467, 23 April 2019.

39 UNSC Res. 2493, UN Doc. S/RES/2493, 29 October 2019.

40 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, CAB/LEG/24.9/49 (1990), 11 July 1990, Art. 16, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b38c18.html.

41 Ibid., Art. 27.

42 Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, CETS 197, 16 May 2005, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/43fded544.html.

43 Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, CETS 201, 12 July 2007, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/4d19a904615b.html.

44 R. Gaffney-Rhys, above note 14.

45 For a legal discussion of the use of the term “marriage”, see M. Bergsmo, A. B. Skre and E. J. Wood (eds), above note 26.

46 See Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (eds), Marriage, Family, and Residence, American Museum Sourcebooks in Anthropology, New York, 1968, p. 50; Edmund Ronald Leach, “Polyandry, Inheritance and the Definition of Marriage”, Man, Vol. 55, 1955, pp. 182–183. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary notes that the definition of the word “marriage” is highly controversial because it relates to culture, religion, legal rulings and human rights. Therefore, the definition that the dictionary does provide is quite inadequate, and the only definition that does not itself use the term “marriage” is “an intimate or close union”. See: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marriage.

47 UNGA Res. 71/175, UN Doc. A/RES/71/175, 19 December 2016, available at: www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/71/175&referer=http://www.un.org/en/ga/71/resolutions.shtml&Lang=E.

48 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Child, Early and Forced Marriage, Including in Humanitarian Settings”, available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Women/WRGS/Pages/ChildMarriage.aspx.

49 Anita Raj, “When the Mother Is a Child: The Impact of Child Marriage on the Health and Human Rights of Girls”, Archives of Disease in Childhood, Vol. 95, No. 11, 2010; Andrew Nove, Zoe Matthews, Sarah Neal and Alma Virginia Camacho, “Maternal Mortality in Adolescents Compared with Women of Other Ages: Evidence from 144 Countries”, The Lancet Global Health, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2014.

50 Nawal M. Nour, “Health Consequences of Child Marriage in Africa”, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 12, No. 11, 2006.

51 Committee on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW, above note 12, para. 55(f).

52 UNGA Res. A/C.3/73/L.22/Rev.1, 12 November 2018, available at: https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/C.3/73/L.22/Rev.1.

53 UNGA Res. 69/156, “Child, Early and Forced Marriage”, UN Doc. A/RES/69/156, 22 January 2015.

54 UNSC Res. 2427, UN Doc. S/RES/2427, 9 July 2018, available at: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2427.

55 African Union, “African Union's Campaign to End Child Marriage”, available at: https://au.int/en/sa/cecm.

56 South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children, Regional Action Plan to End Child Marriage in South Asia (2015–2018), 2015.

57 Margaret E. Greene, A Hidden Reality for Adolescent Girls: Child, Early and Forced Marriages and Unions in Latin American and the Caribbean, Plan International in the Americas and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, available at: https://lac.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/UnionesTempranas_ENG_Web.pdf.

58 Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum, Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage and Protecting Children Already in Marriage, available at: www.girlsnotbrides.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/MODEL-LAW-ON-ERADICATING-CHILD-MARRIAGE-AND-PROTECTING-CHILDREN-ALREADY-IN-MARRIAGE.pdf.

59 On child marriage in development settings, see, for example, UNICEF, “Ending Child Marriage: Progress and Prospects”, New York, 2014; UNFPA, Marrying too Young, New York, 2012; A. Raj, above note 49; Joar Svanemyr, Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli, Anita Raj, Ellen Travers and Lakshmi Sundaram, “Research Priorities on Ending Child Marriage and Supporting Married Girls”, Reproductive Health, Vol. 12, 2015.

60 Human Rights Council, 35th Session, Agenda Item 3, “Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including the Right to Development”, 6–23 June 2017.

61 N. M. Nour, above note 2; A. Raj, above note 49; Thais Bessa, “Informed Powerlessness: Child Marriage Interventions and Third World Girlhood Discourses”, Third World Quarterly, Vol.40, No. 11, 2019; CARE, To Protect Her Honour: Child Marriage in Emergencies – the Fatal Confusion between Protecting Girls and Sexual Violence, May 2015; Yvette Efevbera et al., “Girl Child Marriage, Socioeconomic Status, and Undernutrition: Evidence from 35 Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa”, BMC Medicine, Vol. 17, No. 55, 2019.

62 UNICEF, “Child Marriage: Latest Trends and Future Prospects”, available at: https://data.unicef.org/resources/child-marriage-latest-trends-and-future-prospects/.

63 Ibid.

64 Colleen Murray Gastón, Christina Misunas and Claudia Cappa, “Child Marriage among Boys: A Global Overview of Available Data”, Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2019; Megan Arthur et al., “Child Marriage Laws around the World: Minimum Marriage Age, Legal Exceptions, and Gender Disparities”, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2018.

65 C. M. Gastón, C. Misunas and C. Cappa, above note 64.

66 Nina Strochlic, “The Sad Hidden Plight of Child Grooms”, The Daily Beast, 18 September 2014, available at: www.thedailybeast.com/the-sad-hidden-plight-of-child-grooms.

67 Suzanne Petroni, Mara Steinhaus, Natacha Stevanovic Fenn, Kirsten Stoebenau and Amy Gregowski, “New Findings on Child Marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Annals of Global Health, Vol. 83, No. 5–6, 2017, p. 781. For 2018, Kenya and Uganda are both listed as fragile States in the “Alert” category, Zambia is listed as “High Warning”, and Senegal is listed as “Elevated Warning”. See: http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/2018/04/24/fragile-states-index-2018-annual-report/.

68 S. Petroni et al., above note 67.

69 UNICEF, above note 62.

70 Ibid.

71 Human Rights Council, above note 60.

72 The Committee on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW do however note that “[a]s a matter of respecting the child's evolving capacities and autonomy in making decisions that affect her or his life, a marriage of a mature, capable child below 18 years of age may be allowed in exceptional circumstances, provided that the child is at least 16 years of age and that such decisions are made by a judge based on legitimate exceptional grounds defined by law and on the evidence of maturity, without deference to culture and tradition”. Committee on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW, above note 12, para. 20.

73 Theresa Stichick Betancourt and Kashif Tanveer Khan, “The Mental Health of Children Affected by Armed Conflict: Protective Processes and Pathways to Resilience”, International Review of Psychiatry, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2008; Wietse Tol, Suzan Song and Mark J. D. Jordans, “Annual Research Review: Resilience and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents Living in Areas of Armed Conflict – a Systematic Review of Findings in Low- and Middle-Income Countries”, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 54, No. 4, 2013.

74 Dyan Mazurana, We Have Hope: Children, Violence and Resilience, forthcoming.

75 Valerie Oosterveld, “Forced Marriage during Conflict and Mass Atrocity”, in Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes and Nahla Valji (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018.

76 Lakshmi Sundram, “Child Brides in Humanitarian Situations”, available at: https://dihad.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MS-LAKSHMI-SUNDARAM-GIRLS-NOT-BRIDES.pdf.

77 The top ten countries with the highest prevalence of marriage for boys under 18 are, in order of ranking, the CAR, Nicaragua, Madagascar, Nauru, Honduras, Comoros, the Marshall Islands, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Cuba and Nepal. See C. M. Gastón, C. Misunas and C. Cappa, above note 64.

78 Interview by Dyan Mazurana with researcher Aisha Hutchinson, 27 November 2018, on file with author; Dallin Van Leuven, Dyan Mazurana and Rachel Gordon, “Analysing Foreign Females and Males in the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) through a Gender Perspective”, in Andrea de Guttry, Francesca Capone and Christopher Paulussen (eds), Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond, T. M. C. Asser Press, The Hague, 2016.

79 CARE UK, “To Protect Her Honour”: Child Marriage in Emergencies – the Fatal Confusion between Protecting Girls and Sexual Violence, 2015, available at: https://insights.careinternational.org.uk/publications/to-protect-her-honour-child-marriage-in-emergencies-the-fatal-confusion-between-protecting-girls-and-sexual-violence.

80 Shermila Antony Perera, Post War Trends in Child Marriage: Sri Lanka, Fokus Women, Oslo, 2015.

81 Human Rights Watch, No Place for Children: Child Recruitment, Forced Marriage, and Attacks on Schools in Somalia, 2012, available at: www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/somalia0212ForUpload.pdf; interview with researcher Phoebe Donnelly, 13 August 2018.

82 Adam Branch, Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2011.

83 CARE UK, above note 79.

84 Human Rights Watch, “This Old Man Can Feed Us, You Will Marry Him”: Child and Forced Marriage in South Sudan, New York, 2013, available at: www.hrw.org/report/2013/03/07/old-man-can-feed-us-you-will-marry-him/child-and-forced-marriage-south-sudan.

85 UNICEF, Child Marriage in Humanitarian Settings: Spotlight on the Situation in the Arab Region, UNICEF MENARO, UNFPA ASRO, CARE, TDH, WRC and University of Bedfordshire, 2018, available at: https://www.unicef.org/mena/sites/unicef.org.mena/files/2018-08/CM%20in%20humanitarian%20settings%20MENA.pdf

86 Human Rights Watch, above note 84.

87 Anita Raj, Charlemagne Gomez and Jay G. Silverman, “Driven to a Fiery Death: The Tragedy of Self-Immolation in Afghanistan”, New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 358, No. 21, 2008; Lisa Khoury, “Forced into Abusive Marriages, Syrian Child Brides Increasingly Turn to Suicide”, The Times of Israel, 1 August 2018.

88 UNICEF, A Profile of Child Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa, 2019, available at: https://www.unicef.org/mena/reports/profile-child-marriage. Another comparative research programme is under way between the Women's Refugee Commission and Johns Hopkins University. Research was carried out in Ethiopia, Myanmar and Lebanon; results will be available in 2020 and 2021.

89 Ibid.; ICRC, Displaced in Cities: Experiencing and Responding to Urban Internal Displacement Outside Camps, available at: https://tinyurl.com/vbqsfey.

90 Girls Not Brides, “Child Marriage in Humanitarian Settings”, 2018, available at: www.girlsnotbrides.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Child-marriage-in-humanitarian-settings.pdf.

91 Ibid.

92 UNICEF, A Study on Child Marriage in Jordan, 2014, available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/jordan/study-early-marriage-jordan-2014. This study includes specific data related to Syria's refugees.

93 See, for example, “Child Marriage Soars Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan”, The Guardian, 16 July 2014, available at: www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jul/16/child-marriage-syria-refugees-jordan; “The Trauma of Syria's Married Children”, Al Jazeera, 23 July 2014, available at: www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2014/07/trauma-syria-married-children-201472214545541515.html; “Child Marriage Shows No Sign of Abating in Jordan, UNICEF Study Shows”, UNICEF press release, 16 July 2014, available at: www.unicef.org/media/media_74290.html; “Too Young to Wed: The Growing Problem of Child Marriage among Syrian Girls in Jordan”, ReliefWeb, 17 July 2014, available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/too-young-wed-growing-problem-child-marriage-among-syrian-girls-jordan-0.

94 Rima Mourtada, Jennifer Schlecht and Jocelyn DeJong, “A Qualitative Study Exploring Child Marriage Practices among Syrian Conflict-Affected Populations in Lebanon”, Conflict and Health, Vol. 11, Suppl. 1, 2017.

95 Susan Andrea Bartels et al., “Making Sense of Child, Early and Forced Marriage among Syrian Refugee Girls: A Mixed Methods Study in Lebanon”, BMJ Global Health, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2018.

96 Roxani Krystalli, Elizabeth Stites, Alex Humphrey and Vaidehi Krishnan, The Currency of Connections: The Impact of Weddings and Rituals on Social Connections in Bentiu, South Sudan, Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, September 2019, available at: https://fic.tufts.edu/publication-item/the-currency-of-connections-the-impact-of-weddings-and-rituals-on-social-connections/.

97 Girls Not Brides, above note 90.

98 Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Forced Marriage Conversion for Yezidis: Victims, Witnesses Describe Islamic State's Brutality to Captives”, 11 October 2014, available at: www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/11/iraq-forced-marriage-conversion-yezidis; Stephanie Sinclair, “Child, Bride, Mother: Nigeria”, New York Times, 27 January 2017, available at: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/27/sunday-review/29Exposures-child-bride-interactive.html; Hilary Matfess, Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses, Zed Books, New York and London, 2015; Human Rights Watch, above note 81.

99 A by no means exhaustive list of research includes Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Forced Marriage Conversion for Yezidis”, above note 98; S. Sinclair, above note 98; Annie Bunting, Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, “Introduction: Something Old, Something New?”, and Stacy Hynd, “To Be Taken as a Wife Is a Form of Death”, in Annie Bunting, Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts (eds), Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, 2016; Jeannie Annan, Christopher Blattman, Khristopher Carlson and Dyan Mazurana, “Civil War, Reintegration, and Gender in Northern Uganda”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 55, No. 6, 2011; Evelyn Amony, I Am Evelyn Amony, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2015; Teddy Atim, Dyan Mazurana and Anastasia Marshak, “Women Survivors and Their Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda”, Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management, Vol. 42, Suppl. 1, 2018; Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana, Where are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Montreal, 2004; M. Bergsmo, A. B. Skre and E. J. Wood (eds), above note 26; Neha Jain, “Forced Marriage as a Crime against Humanity: Problems of Definition and Prosecution”, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 6, No. 5, 2008; Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women's Lives Through War and Peace in Sierra Leone, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2009; Khristopher Carlson and Dyan Mazurana, “Forced Marriage within the Lord's Resistance Army, Uganda”, Feinstein International Center, Medford, MA, May 2008; Erin Baines, “Forced Marriage as a Political Project: Sexual Rules and Relations in the Lord's Resistance Army”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 51, No. 3, 2014; Erin Baines, Buried in the Heart: Women, Complex Victimhood and the War in Northern Uganda, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; Megan Mackenzie, Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security, and Post-Conflict Development, New York University Press, New York, 2012; Reed M. Wood and Jakana L. Thomas, “Women on the Frontline: Rebel Group Ideology and Women's Participation in Violent Rebellion”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2017; Zoe Marks, “Sexual Violence Inside Rebellion: Policies and Perspectives of the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone”, Civil Wars, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2013; Clémence Pinaud, “Military Kinship, Inc.: Patronage, Inter-Ethnic Marriages and Social Classes in South Sudan”, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 43, No. 148, 2016. For details on sex with fellow armed group members outside marriage in the contexts of El Salvador and Colombia, see Jocelyn Viterna, Women in War: The Micro-Processes of Mobilization in El-Salvador, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Keith Stanski, “Terrorism, Gender, and Ideology: A Case Study of Women Who Join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)”, in James J. F. Forest (ed.), The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training, and Root Causes, Vol. 1: Recruitment, Praeger Security International, Westport, CT, 2006.

100 The Special Court of Sierra Leone Appeals Chamber has defined forced marriage as “a situation in which the perpetrator through his words or conduct, or those of someone for whose actions he is responsible, compels a person by force, threat of force, or coercion to serve as a conjugal partner resulting in severe suffering, or physical, mental, or psychological injury to the victim”.

101 ICC, The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen, Case No. ICC-02/04-01/15.

102 J. Annan et al., above note 99; E. Amony, above note 99; T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99; S. McKay and D. Mazurana, above note 99.

103 Holly Porter, After Rape: Violence, Justice and Social Harmony in Uganda, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017; T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99; Kimberly Theidon, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence”, Current Anthropology, Vol. 56, Suppl. 12, 2015.

104 T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99.

105 UNSC Res. 2122, UN Doc. S/RES/2122, 18 October 2013, available at: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2122.

106 Charli Carpenter (ed.), Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones, Kumarian Press, San Francisco, CA, 2007; T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99.

107 T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99; C. Carpenter (ed.), above note 106; Myriam Denov and Antonio Piolanti, “Mothers of Children Born of Genocidal Rape in Rwanda: Implications for Mental Health, Well-Being and Psycho-Social Support Interventions”, Health Care for Women International, Vol. 40, No. 7–9, 2019; Myriam Denov and Atim Angela Lakor, “When War is Better Than Peace: The Post-Conflict Realities of Children Born of Wartime Rape in Northern Uganda”, Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 65, 2017; K. Theidon, above note 103.

108 Michael Goodhart, “Sins of the Fathers: War Rape, Wrongful Procreation, and Children's Human Rights”, Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2007; Myriam Denov, Leah Woolner, Jules Pacifique Bahati, Paulin Nsuki and Obed Shyaka, “The Intergenerational Legacy of Genocidal Rape: The Realities and Perspectives of Children Born of the Rwandan Genocide”, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, May 2017.

109 T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99; Carpenter, Charli, Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond, Columbia University Press, New York, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Carpenter (ed.), above note 106; H. Porter, above note 103; M. Denov and A. A. Lakor, above note 107.

110 T. Atim, D. Mazurana and A. Marshak, above note 99.

111 M. Denov and A. A. Lakor, above note 107.

112 Dyan Mazurana, “The Role of Spirituality and Ritual in the Acceptance of Children Born of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence”, in Kimberly Theidon and Dyan Mazurana (eds), Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation, Rutgers University Press, forthcoming; Tatjana Takseva, “‘Where Would You Send the Pain?’ Agency and Resilience in Three Children Born of War in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, in Kimberly Theidon and Dyan Mazurana (eds), Challenging Conceptions: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation, Rutgers University, forthcoming.

113 Mohinder Watson, Millions of Child Widows Forgotten, Invisible and Vulnerable, Action on Child, Early and Forced Marriage, 9 July 2018, available at: http://actiononchildearlyandforcedmarriage.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ChildWidowsReport_2018_Mohinder_Watson.pdf.

114 Systems of exchange play important roles in marriage practices throughout the world, and bridewealth (also known as bride price) and dowry are two key systems of exchange that involve the transfer of goods or services between the husband and his kin to the family of the bride (see A. Bunting, B. N. Lawrance and R. L. Roberts, above note 99). The bridewealth payment is framed as an exchange for the bride's productive and reproductive labour as part of the marriage. Bunting et al. explain: “Bridewealth was a strategic investment that built and maintained webs of kinship and organized and controlled labor” (ibid., p. 17). While dowry and bridewealth are part of similar systems, dowry is provided by the bride's kin to the groom and “is a means to enhance the attractiveness of a bride in marriage” (ibid., p. 18).

115 Girls Not Brides, above note 90.

116 Ibid.

117 UNGA Res. A/C.3/73/L.22/Rev.1, above note 52.

118 Ibid.

119 Prevalence is the proportion of cases in the population at a given time and indicates how widespread child or forced marriage is in the population. Incidence is the occurrence of new cases over a set amount of time (usually months or a year) and can provide information about the risk of child or forced marriage and the rate of occurrence of new cases.