Guyana

30% of girls in Guyana are married or in a union before their 18th birthday and 4% are married or in a union before the age of 15.

9% of Guyanese boys are married or in a union before the age of 18.

Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) are particularly prevalent among Amerindian communities, and in Upper Takutu-Upper Esequibo and Potaro-Siparuni.

According to UNICEF, CEFMU in Guyana frequently takes the form of a “visiting relationship” — an informal union, with social and sexual relationship but no cohabitation.

Child, Early, and Forced Marriage and Unions (CEFMU) are driven by gender inequality and the belief that women and girls are somehow inferior to men and boys.

There is limited information on CEFMU in Guyana, but available studies show that it is largely driven by:

Level of education: 46% of women with no education were married or in a union as children, compared to only 12% who had completed higher education.

Poverty: 38% of women in Guyana’s poorest households were married or in a union before the age of 18, compared to 21% from the richest households.

Guyana 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.

Guyana 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 1980, which obligates states to ensure free and full consent to marriage.

In 2019, the CEDAW Committee recommended Guyana to establish the minimum legal age of marriage for girls and boys at 18 years and conduct awareness-raising campaigns to challenge cultural attitudes that legitimise child marriage.

During its 2015 Universal Periodic Review, Guyana considered recommendations related to child marriage to already be in the process of implementation, including ensuring criminalisation of the practice and carrying out awareness-raising among women about their rights.

Guyana, as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS), is bound to the Inter American System of Human Rights, which recognises the right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and calls to governments to strengthen the respond to address gender-based violence and discrimination, including early, forced and child marriage and unions from a perspective that respected evolving capacities and progressive autonomy.

Guyana ratified the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (known as the Belém do Pará Convention) in 1996. In 2016, the Follow-up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI) recommended State Parties to review and reform laws and practices to increase the minimum age for marriage to 18 years for women and men.

Guyana, as a member of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), adopted the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development in 2013, which recognises the need to address the high levels of adolescent pregnancy in the region as usually associated with the forced marriage of girls. In 2016, the Montevideo Strategy for Implementation of the Regional Gender Agenda was also approved by the ECLAC countries. This Agenda encompasses commitments made by the governments on women’s rights and autonomy, and gender equality, during the last 40 years in the Regional Conferences of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean. The agenda reaffirms the right to a life free of all forms of violence, including forced marriage and cohabitation for girls and adolescents.

Guyana is one of the countries where the Spotlight Initiative (a global, multi-year partnership between the European Union and the United Nations) is supporting efforts to end all forms of sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices against women and girls.

Guyana is a partner country of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).

Under the Marriage Act 1990 the minimum legal age of marriage is 18 years.

However, those aged 16 can be married with parental consent. In addition, if a girl under 16 years becomes pregnant or has a child, she may apply by petition to a Judge of the High Court, for permission to be married to the father of her child, if the father of the child is at least 16 years old.