Bénin

31% of girls in Benin are married before their 18th birthday and 9% are married before the age of 15.

5% of boys in Benin are married before the age of 18.

Child marriage rates vary across the country and are highest in Alibori (where 54% of women aged 20-49 were married before the age of 18), Zou (43%) and Borgou (40%).

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that girls are somehow inferior to boys. In Benin, child marriage is also driven by:

Level of education: 27% of women who have only completed primary education were married before 18, compared to 2% who have completed secondary school or higher.

Poverty: 44% of women in Benin’s poorest households were married before 18, compared to 16% from the richest households.

Adolescent pregnancy: Between 2015 – 2020, the adolescent birth rate in Benin was 108% with 19% of girls giving birth before the age of 18.

Trafficking: While there is a lack of recent statistics about the scale of the problem, trafficking in Benin is both internal and across borders, and involves children from low-income families. Informal trafficking routes involve West and Central African countries. Trafficking places girls at particular risk of being forcibly married or forced into sexual and domestic servitude.

Benin has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The government did not provide an update on progress towards this target during the High Level Political Forum in 2017 and 2018. The government submitted a Voluntary National Review at the 2020 High Level Political Forum. In this review, the government noted that at both institutional and religious levels advocacy to end child marriage is taking place, it acknowledged that 14 village chiefs and 556 religious leaders have committed to ending child marriage within their communities.

In July 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, Benin committed to a 5-year action journey to accelerate gender equality by 2026. The $40 million USD investment will include the development of legal and social change to end gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation in Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Togo.

Benin co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage, and the 2013 Human Rights Council resolution on child, early and forced marriage. In 2014, Benin signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Benin ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1992, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2016 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern that child marriage is still practiced on a large scale in rural areas and specific regions in the north of Benin. It recommended that the government raise awareness on the harmful effects that child marriage has on the physical and mental wellbeing of girls, targeting households, local authorities, judges and religious leaders.

During its 2018 Universal Periodic Review, Benin supported recommendations to redouble efforts to significantly reduce harmful practices such as child marriage, and to strengthen information campaigns and enforcement of the law.

In 2017 Benin launched the African Union Campaign to End Child Marriage in Africa.

In 1997 Benin ratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, including Article 21 regarding the prohibition of child marriage.

In 2005 Benin ratified the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, including Article 6 which sets the minimum age for marriage as 18.

As a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in 2017 Benin adopted the Strategic Framework for Strengthening National Child Protection Systems under which protecting children from marriage is a priority. In June 2019, the ECOWAS Heads of State endorsed the ECOWAS Child Policy and Strategic Action Plan and the 2019-2030Roadmap on prevention and response to child marriage.

In addition, in July 2019, the ECOWAS First Ladies signed “The Niamey Declaration: Call to End Child Marriage and to promote the Education and empowerment of Girls”, calling Member States to initiate legislative, institutional and budgetary reforms to implement the 2019-2030 Roadmap.

Benin is a partner country of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

In October 2018, CARE, the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR) and the Government of Benin established the ProJeunes 2018 – 2021 project. This project, funded by the Canadian government (Global Affairs Canada) aims to promote adolescent sexual and reproductive health, adolescent rights and the prevention of child marriage.

In 2016 the Ministry of Social Affairs, UNICEF Benin and the First Lady Claudine Talon launched the “Zero Tolerance to Child Marriage” campaign which aims to end child marriage by changing social norms and creating a protective environment for children and their communities.

The national youth platform “Plateforme des Jeunes Synergie d’Action pour la Campagne Tolérance Zéro” plays a key role in implementing the campaign and also breaking silence on sexual violence against children.

As part of this, young artists, in partnership with UNICEF Benin, produced a soap opera on early pregnancies and dialogue between parents and children, the hymn of the campaign to end child marriage “Let me grow up”, a damning song on sexual violence in schools, as well as on sexual violence directed to traditional and religious leaders. The campaign has led to significant achievements, including community dialogues on child marriage at the district level, discussions with religious leaders and training of journalists on child marriage.

In May 2019, the Ministry of Social Affairs organised a workshop to take stock of all the actions carried out as part of the “Zero Tolerance to Child Marriage” campaign, plan future actions to reduce and eradicate child marriage in Benin, and make available to stakeholders various awareness-raising products developed in the campaign.

In 2014 the Council of Ministers adopted the National Policy for the Protection of Children and its accompanying Action Plan.

Traditional leaders pay a key role in ending child marriage. In 2018, the leaders of the Baatonu people signed an official declaration where they committed to end child marriage in the Baatonu culture.

Benin is one of the 11 countries working to create child marriage-free communities by 2020 as part of the Her Choice Alliance. The Alliance is working to improve the enforcement of the minimum age of marriage by setting up monitoring bodies in the communities.

The Code des Personnes et de la Famille 2002 and the Code de l’Enfant 2015-08 both establish 18 as the minimum age of marriage.

However minors can marry before 18 years with parental consent or in some cases judicial consent.