Ten years ago, when Bolivia tried to ban the practice of child marriage, the bill flopped. Lawmakers were worried it undermined cultural norms around womanhood and parents’ rights to decide family issues at home.
This year, even in a deeply divided legislature, it was one of the only bills to pass. It is now illegal for anyone under 18 years old to marry for any reason, even if parents agree to the union.
Moving from an unthinkable proposal to a low-hanging legislative fruit in a single decade, stricter marriage laws for young Bolivian girls are part of rapid cultural change both inside this Andean nation and beyond.
Why We Wrote This
Views on whether girls should marry before age 18 have radically shifted in Bolivia, allowing for a prohibition to be put in place this year. But the cultural norms and attitudes that drive the practice remain.
Across Latin America, women are waiting longer to get married, often due to increased education, broader access to contraceptive and sexual education, and falling rates of teen pregnancies.
But this is no time for complacency, lawmakers and women’s groups here say. For one thing, progress for women has been uneven in Bolivia, especially between urban and rural areas. A prolonged economic crisis could ramp up pressure on families looking for financial relief by partnering their daughters too early. And if the new law forbids child marriage, new norms like cohabitation could simply push cultural practices outside official purviews.
“There are some out there who want to turn back time, citing customs and culture,” says Senator Virginia Velasco, who wrote the bill banning the marriage of minors in Bolivia. “Child marriage isn’t culture. And customs are not above fundamental human rights.”
Improving, but not fast enough
Today, an estimated 29% of women in Latin America and the Caribbean marry before the age of 18, with some 12% marrying before 15. Child marriage rates aren’t growing in the region, including in Bolivia – but they aren’t falling at the same pace as in other parts of the world, like Central and Southern Asia. By 2030, rates of the practice are projected to be worse in Latin America than in any region except sub-Saharan Africa.
More than 6,000 girls between 16 and 17 years of age were married in Bolivia between 2014 and 2024, according to the Ombudsman’s Office and the Civil Registry. The office found a strong correlation between high rates of child pregnancy and high rates of child marriage. Government data also found a link between teen pregnancies and rape, with the highest rate of pregnancies from rape among minors in rural areas. That rate stands at nearly 23% in the town of Viacha, roughly two hours, three buses, and a cable-car ride outside the capital La Paz.
On a recent day this fall, Viacha hosts its annual festival for its patron saint, Virgin Maria del Rosario. Community members wear intricately woven aguayo shawls and wooden shoes with metal spurs that double as musical instruments for the parade. It’s not just the clothes and ceremonies that remain traditional here though. Rural areas are some of the hardest to reach with education campaigns, whether about reproductive health, domestic violence, or child marriage.
“When we work in rural schools on programs around empowerment and entrepreneurship, girls often tell us ‘I have to ask my father’s permission,’” says Ana Lizeth Quispe Medina, a law student and youth organizer with the Organization of Youth in Action Viacha. “Parents still have the final say in many communities.”
And pressure on families has mounted as Bolivia faces its worst economic crisis in 40 years. Some activists fear women and girls could be hit hardest – dropping out of school to work or being forced into romantic partnerships with adults to ease economic pressures on parents.
“In Bolivia … women are still seen as objects,” says Mónica Bayá, director of the Bolivian nongovernmental organization Community of Human Rights, which spent years advocating for an end to child marriage. “Situations of rape or adolescent pregnancies are often ‘repaired’ by a marriage. Other cases are linked with poverty, where a family has various children and marrying one can liberate the family.”
Changing family norms
In some ways these worries seem out of place in a changing society. Jhasmyn Tuco is carefree about her role as a Bolivian woman, flying down a one-story cement slide on a sunny October morning, cackling with friends as they crash-land. The 21-year-old is aware that her mother was settling down and her grandmother was already raising children when they were her age – certainly not playing in a park.
“I’m not even thinking about marriage,” says Ms. Tuco, who is focused on finishing school and launching a professional career. “Maybe when I’m 40.”
Cohabitation has risen exponentially in the region over the last four decades, according to a 2020 UN Women report.
Access to sexual education is likely playing a role in the falling marriage rates, too. At the La Paz location of CIES, a nonprofit clinic and sexual-health education organization, a waiting room poster lists dozens of words that “love is not:” lying, dependence, confusion, and suffering. Sex education has been integrated into Bolivia’s national curriculum since 2013, the result of a law requiring all schools – private, public, or religious – to talk about consent, contraceptives, and relationships.
“Today you see more and more women saying, ‘Well, maybe I’d rather not get married. Maybe I’d rather have a dog or cat than a baby,’” says Gloria Arauco Lima, head of education programming at CIES.
The diminishing controversy around banning child marriage could be a reflection of these new attitudes about matrimony, says Nadia Alejandra Cruz Tarifa, who from 2019 to 2022 was Bolivia’s ombudsman on human rights.
But there is more work to do, argues Rehembran Roger Humerez Colque, who runs CIES’ La Paz youth programming. “This law [banning child marriages] was pushed by women and women’s organizations, and men have not been as involved as they should be,” he says.
It is particularly worrisome to Ms. Cruz if child-adult pairings simply move away from formal marriages in front of a judge or priest. There may be fewer marriages, but “early unions and cohabitation persist, which are harder to control because they cut out the state,” she says.
That’s why, Ms. Bayá says, she is adamant: “We need more than just reform.”
