Official finding Islamic institutions and contexts Other Islamic authority or family context Mali · 2024

Mali: the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child records a marriage age of sixteen for girls under the Personal and Family Code, child marriage affecting one girl in two, and attacks on children with albinism for ritual purposes

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

the Personal and Family Code (Law No. 2011-087), the body of personal-status law setting a lower marriage age for girls than for boys

Organization

United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Republic of Mali

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The religious warrant is the Personal and Family Code, Law No. 2011-087, a body of personal-status law which fixes a girl's marriage age two years below a boy's. It is that Code, and not a general civil rule, which determines when a girl may be married, and the Committee's recommendation is directed at amending it.

Religious marriage or family control
Violent occult ideology or sacrifice
Institutional obedience or isolation

Scope decision

This record relies on CODEBOOK §11 (fused religious-state authority) and is coded fusedAuthority: true. The provision supplying the religious warrant is named in spiritualNexus: the Personal and Family Code, Law No. 2011-087 of 30 December 2011. This is an official finding by a United Nations treaty body, not a criminal proceeding: nobody was prosecuted, no court has adjudicated anything recorded here, and no individual is named. The finding that attacks on children with albinism are perpetrated for ritual purposes is recorded because the Committee makes it in the same paragraph; it is an inverse-relation harm of the kind the archive files under accusation-driven violence, and it is NOT attributed to the Personal and Family Code or to any religious authority — the two findings share a paragraph, not a mechanism. The female genital mutilation estimate is likewise recorded as the Committee gives it and is not attributed to religious law. The archive holds a separate Malian record concerning a marabout convicted in Bamako; this is distinct from it. The observations describe Mali as at May 2024.

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-05-10 · concluding observations adopted

United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (treaty body established under the Convention on the Rights of the Child). In its concluding observations on the combined third to fifth periodic reports of Mali the Committee recorded that it was deeply concerned that 'the minimum age for marriage is set at 16 years of age for girls and 18 years of age for boys in the Personal and Family Code and that child marriage reportedly affects one girl out of two and remains highly prevalent in the State party'; that 'over 70 per cent of girls are victims of female genital mutilation, according to estimates'; and that 'attacks against children with albinism are perpetrated for ritual purposes'. It urged Mali 'expeditiously [to] take the steps necessary to amend the Personal and Family Code (Law No. 2011-087 of 30 December 2011) to set the minimum age for marriage for girls and boys at 18 years of age', and to ensure effective implementation of the national multisectoral strategy to end child marriage adopted in 2022.

Documented coercion mechanisms

a statutory minimum marriage age of sixteen for girls against eighteen for boys
child marriage the Committee reports as affecting one girl in two
attacks on children with albinism carried out for ritual purposes

Cited record

Sources

un treaty body concluding observations United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding observations on the combined third to fifth periodic reports of Mali, CRC/C/MLI/CO/3-5 (adopted 10 May 2024).: The Committee's own concluding observations, retrieved as PDF from the United Nations documents system and read in full. Paragraph 25 records deep concern that '(a) The minimum age for marriage is set at 16 years of age for girls and 18 years of age for boys in the Personal and Family Code and that child marriage reportedly affects one girl out of two and remains highly prevalent in the State party'; '(b) Over 70 per cent of girls are victims of female genital mutilation, according to estimates'; and '(c) Attacks against children with albinism are perpetrated for ritual purposes'. Paragraph 26(a) urges Mali to 'expeditiously take the steps necessary to amend the Personal and Family Code (Law No. 2011-087 of 30 December 2011) to set the minimum age for marriage for girls and boys at 18 years of age', and 26(b) to ensure effective implementation of the national multisectoral strategy to end child marriage adopted in 2022.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?s=CRC%2FC%2FMLI%2FCO%2F3-5&l=en&t=pdf Corpus classification: un-treaty-body; evidentiary role: concluding-observations.
Retrieval: 2026-07-29 · Preserved; Bound by Fear research cycle 2026-07-29 (CRC channel; UN document retrieved directly from documents.un.org, PDF magic bytes verified, converted with pdftotext and paragraphs 25 and 26 checked verbatim before drafting)

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