Young women in Palestine are on a campaign to ensure that the legal age of marriage for both men and women at 18 years – with no exceptions.
Although the Palestinian law stipulates 18 years as the minimum age for marriage through a Presidential decree in 2019, the law provides for an exception to this rule, which gives the right to a judge without clear perimeters to marry off a girl if he/she believes it is in the child’s best interest.
Granting such broad authority to a judge is disadvantageous to a child and allows this harmful practice to continue unabated.
The 18 Years old with No Exceptions! campaign under the YW4A programme advocates for equality between men and women by ensuring that that protections of minors against sexual and gender-based violence are guaranteed equally regardless of gender.
As stated in the Child Law in Palestine, a minor is anyone under the age of 18 years. Therefore the Campaign is for decision makers to decree the age of marriage to 18 years without exception.
Watch here one of the media campaigns that the young women developed under the YW4A Initiative.
Young women are also engaged in various advocacy actions such as media campaigns, and submissions to the Committee Against Torture and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The programme, through the advocacy technical partner, Equality Now, provides technical support in these actions. This includes planning meetings to train and guide the young women to prepare the statements and young women lawyers to present oral statements on behalf of the submitting team. Such submissions provide the young women with first hand experience on writing submissions to the UN treaty bodies such as writing style and legal language.
