{"id":2032,"date":"2021-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.org\/en\/articles\/mps-vote-for-ground-breaking-bill-to-end-child-marriage-in-uk\/"},"modified":"2021-11-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:00:00","slug":"mps-vote-for-ground-breaking-bill-to-end-child-marriage-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/?p=2032","title":{"rendered":"MPs vote for \u201cground-breaking\u201d bill to end child marriage in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK MPs voted on a \u201cground-breaking\u201d bill on 19 November to make all forms of child marriage illegal in England and Wales. Girls Not Brides UK<\/i><\/a> members described this as a significant milestone in their campaign to end child marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s success is a clear step towards making sure that girls in the UK are able to choose their own futures, and we could not be prouder of our members\u2019 tireless efforts to make this country a better place where every girl can thrive\u201d said Faith Mwangi-Powell, CEO of Girls Not Brides.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cLaws and policies are essential in preventing child marriage, but we also need to change the attitudes that make child marriage acceptable in the first place\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Currently 16 and 17-year-olds can be legally married with parental consent within the UK. However, many children are married due to parental coercion.<\/p>\n

The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill will raise the minimum age of marriage and civil partnership from 16 to 18 in England and Wales. It will also include unregistered marriages and covers all children living in England and Wales, including those married overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis ground-breaking change in the law will make it absolutely clear that no child should ever face child marriage and the lifelong harms that it causes\u201d said Diana Nammi, Executive Director of IKWRO Women\u2019s Rights Organisation<\/a>, a charity that supports girls at risk of child marriage and co-chair Girls Not Brides UK.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cThe law will be on the side of children and vitally, it places the onus squarely on safeguarding professionals to protect any child who is at risk of child marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re absolutely delighted. It\u2019s a campaign that\u2019s been 10 years in the running and to get this far is incredible\u201d said Natasha Rattu, Executive Director of Karma Nirvana<\/a>, part of Girls Not Brides UK.<\/i><\/p>\n

Conservative MP Pauline Latham has been championing the cause for many years. As she presented the bill to the Commons last week, she acknowledged the help and support of \u201cthe charities who form the partnership Girls Not Brides UK<\/i><\/a>;<\/i> Karma Nirvana<\/a>, IKWRO,<\/a> Forward UK<\/a> and the Independent Yemen Group<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latham went on to thank them for their \u201cinstrumental\u201d role in providing data, campaign support and \u201cthe never-ending source of inspiration to keep on pushing for change in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill was met with cross-party support in the Commons. It will now go through to committee stage where each part will be debated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK MPs voted on a \u201cground-breaking\u201d bill on 19 November to make all forms of child marriage illegal in England and Wales. Girls Not Brides UK members described this as a significant milestone in their campaign to end child marriage. \u201cToday\u2019s success is a clear step towards making sure that girls in the UK are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlsnotbrides.ctechapp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}