Position Paper

Country : Japan
Committee : United Nations Human Rights Council
Topic Area : Child Marriage
Marriage is a process of uniting two people (usually between a man and a
woman) so as to create a personal relationship bond usually intimate that is legally
recognized. Marriage is a social practice done by a man and a woman who has mature
age. The average age at marriage in the countries around the world are different.
However, this idea has not always remain, as the existence of child marriage. Child
marriage is basically marriage, which is done by under mature age persons. Why it is
called child marriage because the doers are in young age under 18 years old. Child
marriage is a global issue that goes hand in hand with the data according UNICEF where
across the globe, levels of child marriage are highest in sub-Saharan Africa, where
around 4 in 10 young women were married before age 18, followed by South Asia, where
3 in 10 were married before age 18.1 Lower levels of child marriage are found in Latin
America and Caribbean (25 per cent), the Middle East and North Africa (17 per cent),
and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (11 per cent). 2 Child marriage affects girls in far
greater numbers than boys, with the prevalence among boys about one fifth the level
among girls globally.3
The main factors that commonly can cause early marriage of young of and
adolescent girls across countries are poverty, social norm and cultural tradition, societal
conflicts. For these main factors, child marriage bring harmful impact towards young
girls' generation. For example, girls who have married earlier in young age will no longer
have the chance to pursue education which is a matter for themselves so that they will
have knowledges and skills for career preparation. Second, they will lose their time to
socialize with society, even with their own friend in their age. Third, most of cases are
forced marriage, which is against their willing to marry someone, it could lead them to
have a bad feeling or even the worst depression after the marriage. Not only from
psychological sides, child marriage also brings harm to their physical side. In fact, the

1
UNICEF, “Child Marriage among girls”, retrieved from https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-
protection/child-marriage/ at 09.27, 8 September 2018
2
ibid
3
ibid
basically girl body in young age is not ready for accepting pregnancy. After all, these are
only some of the impact from marriage. That is why Japan believes that child marriage
is violation against human rights. The first-ever substantive resolution on child early
and forced marriage was adopted by the UN General Assembly in November. 4 Although,
116 states from a broad, cross-regional group co-sponsored the resolution, recognising
the need for a target to end child, early and forced marriage in the post-2015
development framework, the number of child marriage is still high across countries. 5
As a commitment to support ending child marriage Japan has made a regulation
on age limitation of marriage.  At present, people must be 20 years old to marry without
parental permission; with parental permission, men can marry from 18, and girls can
marry as young as 16.6 Therefore, for this major problem of child marriage, Japan
proposes several constructive solutions to prevent and eradicate child marriage in long
term, which are:
1. Strengthening commitment to increase awareness about the implications
of child marriage as a movement to prevent child marriage. State members works
with communities and families to make some beneficial programs to educate society
about the bad implication of child marriage. Followed by empowering society with
education, information, skill and support system, thus child marriage child marriage can
be distracted.
2. Offering economy incentives, as further action for poor families so that they
have no more reasons to push their daughter to marry as action for economic survivals.
Economic incentives can be form of fresh money or other support which is adjusted
through policies that will be made by state members.
3. Creating a special supervisory institution for watch child marriage practice.
The institution will be the platform in form of child’s right protection.
With these proposed solutions, Japan assures that the issue of child marriage will be put
to an end, in time.

4
Girls not brides, “Un General Assembly Puts Spotlight On Child, Early And Forced Marriage”,
retrieved from https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage-advocacy-successes-2014 at 13.33, 9
September 2018
5
ibid
6
Heather Barr, “Japan Moves to End Child Marriage” reatrived from
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/21/japan-moves-end-child-marriage at 15.45, 10 September
2018