Gaza War Reverses Decline in Child Marriages
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- Gaza's Supreme Shariah Court recorded 20.6% of 35,474 marriages in 2024-2025 involving girls under 18 — including 627 marriages of girls under 15 — reversing a pre-war decline from over 22% in 2015 to 17.8% in 2022, according to Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data.
- The true rate is likely far higher: court-recorded marriage contracts dropped 35% in 2024, the first full war year, as many marriages went unregistered amid the chaos, according to Amal Siyam, director of Gaza's Women's Affairs Center.
- Majda, a Gaza mother whose husband and eldest son were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes, married off her 13- and 14-year-old daughters to two brothers from a former neighboring family; both girls told the AP they were tied up by their mother-in-law and raped by their husbands, with the younger suffering two miscarriages after being kicked while pregnant.
- Majda's elder daughter eventually fled on foot, carrying her infant son 15 kilometers back to her mother's tent in November; in early May, under pressure from Majda's father and the in-laws, both daughters were sent back to their husbands in Gaza City and have since been unreachable.
- Multiple girls interviewed by the AP said they saw marriage as a way to ease the family burden — it creates a separate aid-eligible household, schools have largely shut down during the war, and families feared children would be left unsupported if their parents were killed in airstrikes.
- Awda Hospital maternity ward head Yasser Shaaban reported an increase in teenage pregnancies during the war, with most patients malnourished due to Israeli aid restrictions and many suffering severe complications; four of the girls the AP interviewed had given birth, with three suffering at least one miscarriage.
- By contrast, the Palestinian Authority's 2019 minimum marriage age of 18 in the West Bank has driven early marriage rates down to around 5%, underscoring that Gaza's 20.6% figure reflects policy gaps and war conditions rather than cultural inevitability.
Why it matters: Gaza's child marriage rate climbed to 20.6% in 2024-2025 from a pre-war 17.8% — a reversal of a seven-year decline — with 627 girls under 15 married in court and likely many more in unregistered ceremonies, meaning the war is locking a generation of girls into the documented cycle of abuse, dangerous teenage pregnancy, and malnourishment-driven complications. The West Bank's 5% rate under a strict minimum-age law shows the gap is a choice, not a given.
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