Child Brides, Grown Men: Why Won’t the UN Call ‘Child Marriage’ What It Is?

Professor Hayat Bearat is quoted in The New York Sun on why global institutions and governments often frame child marriage as a “harmful traditional practice” rather than what it is under the law. Bearat explained that this framing lets marriage stand in for consent, allowing legal loopholes to convert what would otherwise be prosecuted as statutory rape into a sanctioned marriage instead.