Sabah (a pseudonym), a 19-year-old girl, lives in a village in Giza governorate. She got married two years ago—before reaching the legal marriage age—prompting her family to arrange the marriage without registering it until she reaches the age stipulated by Egyptian authorities (18 years for both husband and wife).

According to Article 31 bis of the Egyptian Civil Status Law No. 143 of 1994, as amended by Law No. 126 of 2008, the legal age for marriage for both the husband and wife is 18 Gregorian years, allowing them to prove the marriage before official authorities.

A month after her marriage, Sabah was overjoyed to learn she was pregnant and shared the news with her 23-year-old husband, Hossam. However, her happiness was short-lived, as her husband tragically died in a car accident before their child was born. After giving birth, Sabah could not register her child since the marriage was not legally recognized, and her ordeal began.

Sabah says: “My in-laws started to deny the marriage and the child to avoid sharing the inheritance of my deceased husband or giving me access to the marital home and all my rights.”

She describes: “That was the worst period of my life. I felt that my future and my child’s fate were uncertain, especially since he couldn’t receive the necessary vaccinations for newborns during the ongoing negotiations between the two families, with many mediators intervening to resolve the matter in favor of the child.”

The Egyptian government has paid attention to the issue of early marriage due to its physical and psychological impacts on girls and its connection to other negative societal phenomena. It has been classified under violence against women in health surveys since 2008.

Article 227 of the Penal Code stipulates that “whoever provides false information to public authorities to make one of the spouses reach the legal age for marriage shall be punished by imprisonment for no more than two years or a fine not exceeding 3,000 pounds ($62.50). Additionally, anyone responsible for contracting a marriage knowing that one of the parties has not reached the legal age shall be punished by imprisonment or a fine not exceeding 50 pounds ($1.04).” The penalties apply to the responsible guardian, the officiating official, and the witnesses. Law No. 64 of 2010 also considers early marriage a form of human trafficking, punishable by life imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 pounds ($2,083) for the responsible guardian.

Article 80 of the Egyptian Constitution defines a child as anyone under 18 years old. Article 5 of Law No. 143 of 1994 on Civil Status, as amended by Law No. 126 of 2008, states that “a marriage contract cannot be documented for anyone under 18 years of age from either gender.” However, this law leaves room for guardians to circumvent the law by not requiring the marriage contract to be documented until the girl reaches the legal age, allowing for informal (urfi) marriages witnessed by two people and officiated by a religious official who takes a written pledge from the husband to formalize the marriage once the girl turns 18.

Read more: The Struggle of Women in Rural Egypt: Rights Lost Under the Weight of Tradition

Circumventing the Law

Sabah, concerned for her newborn’s health, sought to purchase the vaccines he was denied in various ways to ensure he received the necessary vaccinations for infants as mandated by the Ministry of Health until she could obtain a birth certificate and establish the child’s parentage.

She notes that after many discussions and mediation, she managed to reach an agreement with her deceased husband’s family to relinquish her right to the marital home and only receive the agreed-upon dowry list from the marriage, as well as waive part of her and her child’s legal inheritance in exchange for registering the marriage and recognizing the child without resorting to legal disputes.

Sabah warns underage girls against marrying before the legal age to avoid repeating her experience. She notes that her village suffers from a high incidence of child marriages.

Hayam El-Ganaini, head of the Legal Support Unit at the Feminist Initiative Moaneth Salem, explains that the phenomenon of underage marriage is widespread, especially in rural and lower-income areas, where such marriages are often conducted via informal contracts or delayed contracts with a well-known religious officiant.

She adds: “In some cases, the girl’s family might take a promissory note from the husband as a form of guarantee that the marriage will be registered later.” However, according to El-Ganaini, these measures often fail to protect the girls’ rights.

The head of the Legal Support Unit at the Feminist Initiative Moaneth Salem notes that once a dispute arises, the girl bears the brunt of the consequences due to the legal ambiguity of her status, as well as the manipulation of any evidence of the marriage, a process that can take a long time to resolve legally. The problem becomes even more complicated if there is a child involved, requiring separate lawsuits to prove the marriage and establish the child’s parentage.

El-Ganaini attributes the problem to the leniency of the fines imposed by the law in such cases, which encourages families to circumvent the law in other ways. Additionally, there is a lack of oversight over those responsible for registering marriage contracts, giving them room to manipulate the registration of underage marriages. She stresses the need to increase fines for proving marriages involving underage girls to over 100,000 pounds ($2,083) to deter families from engaging in such practices.

Insufficient Penalties

Samar, who shares the same village and circumstances as Sabah, was also married before the legal age. She married at 17 after her family settled on that decision when several suitors came forward from the time she was 15. Her family hastened the decision because she was the eldest daughter.

She says: “My father decided to marry me off to Ahmed, a relative, after he proposed several times. Although my father hesitated because Ahmed did not have a stable job, he eventually agreed after Ahmed promised to settle into regular work. The engagement didn’t last long, and we married before I reached the legal age, so the marriage contract was not registered. A few months after the marriage, I discovered that my husband was using drugs, leading him to severely beat me, even though I was pregnant. The abuse nearly cost me my life and my baby’s, prompting my father to seek a divorce after a marriage that lasted less than a year.”

The law imposes penalties for informal marriages involving children under 18, as child marriage is considered a crime due to its negative psychological impacts on the child. The law intervened to impose imprisonment and fines on those involved in child marriage through informal contracts. The law, in Articles 267, 268, and 269, states that it is not permissible to validate a marriage contract for a child under 18 years old at the time of the contract. These penalties apply to the guardian, the officiant, and anyone involved in registering such a marriage. The penalties include six months of imprisonment and fines ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 pounds ($417 to $1,042), and the officiant involved in such marriages is disqualified from their profession.

According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), there were approximately 900,000 marriage contracts in Egypt in 2020, compared to around 800,000 contracts in 2019, a 5.6% increase. The data also shows that there are four types of marriage contracts: new marriage, ratification, return to marriage without a subsequent separation, and remarriage. The statistics indicate that there were approximately 800,000 new marriage contracts in 2020, representing 86.3% of all contracts that year, compared to about 750,000 contracts in 2019, a 3.9% decrease. However, statistics indicate that in 2019, Egypt witnessed approximately 117,220 marriages of girls under the age of 18.

While urban areas accounted for 40.8% of all marriage contracts in 2020, rural areas accounted for 59.2% of all contracts in the same year. The data shows that the highest percentage of marriages occurred in the age group of 25 to under 30 years, accounting for 40.0% of contracts, while the lowest percentage was in the age group of 70 years and above, with 4,288 contracts, representing 0.5% of all contracts. The highest percentage of marriages in the age group of 20 to under 25 years was 37.3%, while the lowest percentage was in the age group of 65 years and above, representing 0.1% of all contracts.

Samar recounts her ordeal following the divorce decision, which was met with resistance from her husband and his family. They began exerting pressure to force her to give up all her rights to register the marriage, divorce, and officially register the child.

She says: “A year and a half of suffering, threats, pressure, and actions that put me and my child in danger, all because I refused to endure humiliation and abuse under the guise of protecting the home and family. After all of this, I had to give up my rights to the marital home and only take what I contributed to the marriage preparations in exchange for officially registering the marriage and divorce, securing a monthly allowance for the child, and acknowledging him.”

She describes her experience as bitter, which led her family to vow not to repeat the mistake with her younger sisters and wait until they reached the legal age before getting married legally. However, this did not prevent their engagements from occurring before they turned 18.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced that in 2022, Egypt recorded one marriage every 34 seconds, one birth every 14 seconds, and one divorce every 117 seconds. It noted that the number of marriages in Egypt increased to 929,400 cases in 2022, compared to 880,000 cases in 2021, a 5.6% increase. CAPMAS also noted that there were 77,500 marriages per month in 2022, 2,546 marriages per day, 106 marriages per hour, and one marriage every 34 seconds.

The agency reported that Cairo topped the list of the ten governorates with the highest number of marriages in 2022, with 150,300 cases, followed by Sharqia with 61,000 cases, Beheira with 58,900 cases, Dakahlia with 57,100 cases, Minya with 56,600 cases, Sohag with 52,000 cases, Gharbia with 51,000 cases, Alexandria with 50,000 cases, Giza with 48,800 cases, and Assiut with 43,600 cases.

According to CAPMAS, the number of births in Egypt reached 2,193,000 in 2022, compared to 2,185,000 in 2021, a 0.4% increase. The average number of births per month was 182,800 in 2022, 6,008 per day, 250 per hour, and 4.2 per minute, equivalent to one birth every 14 seconds.

Regarding the ten governorates with the highest number of births in 2022, Giza had the highest number with 201,500 births, followed by Cairo with 180,300 births, Minya with 161,500 births, Sharqia with 154,500 births, Sohag with 150,600 births, Beheira with 141,800 births, Assiut with 134,700 births, Dakahlia with 121,900 births, Qalyubia with 115,000 births, and Alexandria with 97,100 births.

Regarding divorce, CAPMAS reported that there were 269,800 cases in Egypt in 2022, compared to 254,800 cases in 2021, a 5.9% increase. The average number of divorces per month was 22,500 in 2022, 739 per day, 31 per hour, and one every 117 seconds, or less than two minutes.

The agency noted that Cairo also topped the list of the ten governorates with the highest number of divorces in 2022, with 57,200 cases, followed by Alexandria with 26,300 cases, Giza with 24,100 cases, Sharqia with 19,000 cases, Dakahlia with 17,700 cases, Qalyubia with 14,200 cases, Gharbia with 13,500 cases, Beheira with 13,000 cases, Monufia with 8,400 cases, and Minya with 8,000 cases.

Read more: Child Labor in Egypt: Stolen Childhood and Fatal Accidents during Daily Work Journeys

New Amendments to Protect Children

MP Enas Abdel Halim submitted the first explicit legislation criminalizing early marriage for minors, especially since Article 80 of the Constitution states that “a child is anyone who has not reached the age of 18… and the state is committed to protecting the child from all forms of violence, abuse, mistreatment, and sexual and commercial exploitation.”

Abdel Halim adds: “Upon reviewing the legal texts related to marriage, we find that Law No. 143 of 1994 on Civil Status, as amended by Law No. 126 of 2008, states that ‘no marriage contract can be documented for anyone under 18 years old.’ However, the law does not impose penalties on those who violate this.”

In a related context, Hani Helal, a child rights expert and head of the Egyptian Foundation for the Advancement of Childhood Conditions, explained to Zawia3 that the amendments made to the Child Law in 2008 addressed such issues by allowing the mother to establish the child’s parentage, enabling the issuance of a birth certificate with a random name in the father’s field, ensuring that the child receives their rights, including vaccinations and other state-provided services. Additionally, a lawsuit can be filed to establish the child’s parentage based on DNA analysis according to the 2008 amendments, after which the child’s official records can be updated to reflect the father’s identity.

Helal states that there are no statistics on the number of children affected by the absence of paternal parentage, as most legal disputes fall under honor-related cases, which are handled cautiously by the relevant authorities.

Regarding children born from marriages before the legal age, Helal says this is a circumvention of personal status laws that prohibit child marriage before the age of 18. He stresses the importance of swiftly finalizing amendments to the personal status law that criminalizes child marriage as a form of sexual exploitation and increasing the penalties for such violations, whether through fines or extended imprisonment.

He points out that the new amendments to the personal status law, expected to be passed by Parliament, include harsher penalties and fines for family members who participated in such crimes, as well as anyone found to have been involved in completing the marriage, including the officiant and the administrative staff who registered the marriage later.

Helal recommends increasing awareness across all sectors of society about the dangers of child marriage and the resulting harm, noting that girls are often the biggest losers in such arrangements, with their rights and those of their children being compromised.

Previous Efforts

The Ministry of Social Solidarity launched the campaign “Marrying Before 18 Robs Her Rights” in 2022, adding an additional condition for continuing to receive the Takaful and Karama support, which was not marrying off children under 18, in addition to the conditions of providing healthcare for mothers and children and ensuring they remain in school until secondary education.

The ministry explained that this phenomenon negatively impacts development rates, as an increase in population directly leads to higher consumption rates and demands for services. It also increases the unemployment rate, with Egypt receiving 200,000 births annually due to child marriage, a phenomenon that causes numerous health, economic, and social issues, perpetuating poverty from one generation to the next. In addition, the number of cases involving underage married girls seeking to establish the parentage of their children in Egyptian family courts, as well as other cases seeking to establish their marriages after divorce, either due to the denial of the child’s parentage by the husband, separation, or the husband’s death before the marriage could be documented, continues to rise. There are also cases of alimony claims from divorced girls under 18.

Yara Kamal, a member of the National Council for Women (NCW), told Zawia3 that the council has organized initiatives and awareness seminars in Egyptian villages and governorates in recent years, including the ongoing “Knocking on Doors” initiative, through which council representatives work to raise awareness among mothers about the dangers of child marriage and its health, psychological, and physical harms, as well as its impact on future generations, given that children without legal parentage are denied their rights. The initiative targets areas such as Saf, Atfih, and Hawamdia, where child marriage is prevalent.

Kamal notes that addressing child marriage is at the top of the NCW’s agenda, as it is one of the most dangerous phenomena affecting not only rural areas but also some cities and urban areas. The council collaborates with human rights organizations and civil society groups, as well as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is concerned with women’s and population issues, in addition to many partnerships with national and international entities.

Kamal adds: “The council ensures the implementation of regular initiatives under the banner of ‘Knocking on Doors’ and ‘Houses of Awareness,’ where rural outreach workers provide necessary education on the dangers of child marriage before the legal age, led by trainers who are well-versed in the issue and capable of engaging with various segments of society through different ideas and approaches.”

Despite the efforts made by the state in cooperation with various entities to combat the phenomenon of child marriage and its consequences, including children left without rights due to one party’s disavowal of the illegal relationship, legal loopholes still allow for the continuation and spread of this problem, increasing the number of children without legal parentage.