Italy (2024)

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

There is very little information about child marriage in Italy, but available studies suggest that it is exacerbated by:

Poverty: A 2017 report by a local NGO revealed cases of child marriage in the shanty towns of Rome. Over half of the married women and men interviewed in the study were married before they reached the age of 18.

Ethnicity: A 2014 study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights shows that around 2% of Roma girls aged 10-15 are traditionally married or cohabiting with a partner across 11 European Union member states, including Italy. 16% of Roma men and girls aged 16-17 are legally or traditionally married or cohabiting across the 11 states.

Migration: A 2017 UNICEF study revealed that one in five girls interviewed from countries in West Africa and the Horn of Africa who escaped to Italy left because they had experienced or feared forced marriage.

Italy 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.

Italy has signed the 2021 Human Rights Council resolution on Child, Early and Forced Marriage in times of crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Italy co-sponsored the following Human Rights Council resolutions: the 2013 procedural resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2015 resolution on child, early and forced marriage, the 2017 resolution on recognising the need to address child, early and forced marriage in humanitarian contexts, and the 2019 resolution on the consequences of child marriage. In 2014, Italy also signed a joint statement at the Human Rights Council calling for a resolution on child marriage.

Italy co-sponsored the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 UN General Assembly resolutions on child, early and forced marriage.

Italy ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, which sets a minimum age of marriage of 18, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2019, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended Italy to amend its Civil Code to remove all exceptions that allow marriage under the age of 18 years.

Italy has ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (known as the Istanbul Convention), which considers forced marriage a serious form of violence against women and girls, and legally binds state parties to criminalise the intentional conduct of forcing an adult or child into a marriage.

In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, Italy committed to continue its support, both in terms of advocating and funding actions for the acceleration of changes in partner countries, aiming at the elimination of the harmful traditional practices, and in particular female genital mutilation and early child and forced marriage.

At the London Girl Summit in July 2014, the Government of Italy signed a charter committing to end child marriage by 2020.

Italy has taken a leading stance on tackling child marriage globally. At the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in 2014, Italy co-organised the event, “Ending child marriage: towards a more gender equitable world” with support from UNFPA. The Minister of Foreign Affairs emphasised that education and training programmes are an effective tool in eradicating child marriage.

The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has launched specific programmes on girl’s education as part of wider strategies to end child marriage, including in Senegal. Italy has also provided funding to the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage to work in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

The tenth edition of “Race of Saints” on All Saints Day in 2017 raised funds to support child brides in the southern state of Karnataka, Bangalore, India.