Harmful practices (joint General Recommendation with CEDAW) 2014, para. 24
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- The payment of dowries and bride prices, which varies among practising communities, may increase the vulnerability of women and girls to violence and to other harmful practices. The husband or his family members may engage in acts of physical or psychological violence, including murder, burning and acid attacks, for failure to fulfil expectations regarding the payment of a dowry or its size. In some cases, families will agree to the temporary "marriage" of their daughter in exchange for financial gains, also referred to as a contractual marriage, which is a form of trafficking in human beings. States parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography have explicit obligations with regard to child and/or forced marriages that include dowry payments or bride prices because they could constitute a sale of children as defined in article 2 (a) of the Protocol. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has repeatedly stressed that allowing marriage to be arranged by such payment or preferment violates the right to freely choose a spouse and has in its general recommendation No. 29 outlined that such practice should not be required for a marriage to be valid and that such agreements should not be recognized by a State party as enforceable.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Committee on the Rights of the Child
- Document type
- General Comment / Recommendation
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Harmful Practices
- Violence
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Families
- Girls
- Women
- Year
- 2014
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- CRC General Comment No. 18, Harmful practices (joint General Comment with CEDAW) (2014), para. 24.
- Paragraph number
- 24
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