‘They’re girls, not wives’: Colombia votes to outlaw child marriage

elbahrain.net Colombia’s congress has voted to change a law that allowed minors to get married with parental consent.

The proposal would make the minimum age for marriage 18, and seeks to protect the rights and development opportunities for minors. It still must be signed into law by President Gustavo Petro.

Currently, the country’s civil code allows person as young as 14 years old to get married with parental consent.

The initial proposal to reform the law – presented in 2023 – used the slogan “they’re girls, not wives” and aimed to prevent young girls from being forced to marry, to be subject to different forms of violence and to miss out on education and development opportunities.

“Minors are not sexual objects, they’re girls,” congresswoman Clara López Obregón said in a statement after the proposal was greenlit.

Child marriage remains a widespread practice worldwide and affects around 12 million girls per year, according to the UN’s agency for children, UNICEF.

But there’s been a global drop in child marriages over the past few years, according to the agency’s statistics. “Ten years ago, one in four young women aged 20 to 24 was married as a child. Today that number has fallen to one in five,” UNICEF said.

In Latin America, poverty is the main factor leading to minors getting married, according to UNICEF. Travelers aboard a Southwest Airlines flight preparing to leave Denver Friday had to evacuate after a passenger’s cell phone battery caught on fire and caused an airplane seat to catch fire as well.

The Boeing 737-700 was still parked at a gate with 108 passengers on board when the incident occurred at Denver International Airport, according to Southwest.

Passengers in the back of the plane fled using the rear emergency slides, and passengers toward the front left through the front door via the jet bridge, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and the airline.

Preliminary reports show one passenger had a minor injury during the evacuation, and the passenger whose phone caught fire is currently being treated for burns, the Dallas-based airline said in a statement. Crew members were able to extinguish the seat fire, the statement said.

“Southwest’s customer care team is working to accommodate the passengers on another aircraft to their original destination of Houston,” an airline spokesperson said. “Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees. The incident remains under investigation.”

The flight arrived three hours later to its destination at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, according to data from FlightAware.