End child marriage in the United States

Thank you for your generosity to Tahirih Justice Center. Folks like you are what keep our doors open to support women and girls fleeing violence. I wanted to share a quick update on some exciting movement we’ve had at the federal policy level! Child marriage is a significant problem in the United States that overwhelmingly affects underage girls who are married to adult men, often with dire consequences for their life outcomes, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse, poverty, lower educational attainment, and compromised mental and physical health.

On August 2^nd The Child Marriage Prevention Act, groundbreaking federal legislation, was introduced in the Senate. This is the first time that the United States’ Congress has taken action to condemn and prevent child marriage as a domestic problem. Despite our and other advocates' best efforts, child marriage remains a nefarious problem in the United States. The fact is, child marriage is still legal in well over half of all U.S. states, with over 300,000 minors married between 2000 and 2018.

This bill sends a strong message that the United States condemns child marriage no matter where it occurs and makes historic investments to incentivize states to ban child marriage. It also updates U.S. immigration law to close loopholes in the marriage-based visa program that enabled the exploitation of children under the guise of marriage.

Some key provisions of the legislation include:

• Establishing a National Commission to Combat Child Marriage to study, evaluate, and report on eliminating child marriage in the United States;
• Incentivizing states to ban child marriage (such as through increased VAWA grant funding);
• Establishing a competitive grant program for eligible states that create state-based task forces to examine child marriage in their individual states; 
• Prohibiting child marriage from occurring on federally-funded land or buildings or property owned by the federal government (such as military bases); 
• Instructing the Attorney General to promulgate a model state statute that prohibits child marriage; and
• Requiring U.S. petitioners and foreign beneficiaries of spouse and fiancée visas to be 18 at the time of the petition to prevent children from being forced into marriage for migration purposes.

Your support has made our work to end child marriage possible. I’m so proud of the incredible progress that has been made since our first campaign to change marriage laws in Virginia in 2016, but there is still work to be done. Girls everywhere are only as safe as the weakest law allows. Thank you for continuing to support Tahirih Justice Center as we work to ensure all immigrant survivors has support on their journey to justice.

Links:

• Historic Legislation Introduced to Prevent Child Marriage
• Meet Genevieve
• Ending Child Marriage in VA