Vanuatu

21% of girls in Vanuatu are married before the age of 18 and 2% are married before their 15th birthday.

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

According to a 2007 MICS survey, child marriage is most common in rural areas and in particular Tafea, Shefa and Penama. Data also suggests that girls who marry young in Vanuatu are likely to marry older men and consequently become widows at early ages.

Child marriage is driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is very limited information on child marriage in Vanuatu, but available studies suggest that it is driven by:

Poverty: Women from Vanuatu’s poorest households are likely to marry about half a year earlier than women from the richest households.

Level of education: Education has shown to delay marriage in Vanuatu. Women who have completed secondary education tend to marry two years later than those with primary level education.

Harmful practices: Arranged and forced marriages are still practised in some parts of Vanuatu. The exchange of girls for gifts – known as bride price – encourages some families to marry off their daughters and contributes to a perception that girls are “possessions”.

Vanuatu has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The government has not submitted a Voluntary National Review in any High Level Political Forum to date.

Vanuatu co-sponsored the 2013 and 2014 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

Vanuatu ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1995, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2014 and 2016, the CEDAW Committee urged the government to raise the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 and expressed regret that there had been no relevant amendment of the Marriage and Control Act to date.

In 2017, the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child urged Vanuatu to revise the Control of Marriage Act to ensure that the minimum age for marriage is established at 18 for both girls and boys and take all necessary measures to eliminate child marriages.

During Vanuatu’s 2014 Universal Periodic Review, concerns were raised about the different minimum age for marriage between girls and boys. The Committee questioned what specific measures have been taken to prevent child marriage in the country. During its 2019 Universal Periodic Review, Vanuatu supported recommendations to revise legislation to raise the minimum age for marriage in compliance with international human rights standards and end child, early and forced marriage.

Vanuatu is one of the focus countries in the Pacific region where the Spotlight Initiative (a global, multi-year partnership between European Union and United Nations) is supporting partners and institutions to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030.

Vanuatu is a partner development country of the Global Partnership for Education.

Regionally, the Spotlight Pacific Regional Initiative builds on existing commitments across 16 Pacific Island countries, Vanuatu being one of them. In 2020, the Prime Minister launched the European Union and United Nations Spotlight Initiative Vanuatu Country Programme. This initiative focuses on strengthening efforts to end domestic violence, intimate partner violence and violence against women through six key strategies:

Law and policies

Institutions

Prevention

Services

Data

Civil society/women’s organisations

The National Gender Equality Policy (2015-2019) identified the need to amend discriminatory provisions in existing legislation related to marriage to comply with CEDAW.

Under the Control of Marriage Act 2006 the legal age for marriage is 21 years. However, boys aged 18 and girls aged 16 can be married with parental permission.

While the Control of Marriage Act 2006 also applies to custom marriages, under customary law, known as the kastom system, a girl is considered to be ready for marriage soon after the start of menstruation.