A victim of a forced union can remain locked up for years, until she decides to escape or until someone rescues her.

Girls and adolescents are usually the main victims of forced marriage, a form of human trafficking for exploitation purposes. In general, they are forced to have sexual relations or to do forced domestic work for the benefit of the person they are living with. However, they can also experience sexual exploitation with third parties.

Although it is a crime in Colombia (Law 985 of 2005), there is legislation that serves to camouflage it in legality and makes it easier for minors to be victims of the abuses committed in forced unions. This is Article 117 of the Civil Code, which supports the marriage of minors, wrongly called child marriage: in the national territory, any person can marry from the age of 14, as long as there is consent from the parents or guardians.

The lawyer and director of the specialization in Family Law at the Universidad Javeriana, Yadira, indicated to Infobae Colombia that, previously, even girls aged 12 and older were allowed to marry, but the Constitutional Court raised the age to 14 by means of a ruling, in order to make it equal to that of boys.

This is how Colombia is now the only country in all of Latin America that allows minors to marry and, in view of how harmful this regulation has become, they have tried to overturn it on more than 10 occasions. None have been successful.

According to the deputy director general of Valientes Colombia, an NGO that helps victims of human trafficking in the country, Danitza Marantes, servile unions, often hidden in child marriages, affect all the rights of girls, boys and adolescents.

“This crime completely disrupts your entire life, the conception you have of your body, of money, of work, of interpersonal relationships,” the anthropologist explained to Infobae Colombia.

Living after surviving

After surviving a servile marriage, returning to a normal life is very difficult. The consequences can be devastating: girls, adolescents and adult women face forced pregnancies, contagion of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and serious effects on their mental health.

It should be noted that, while it is true that boys and young men are also victims of servile unions, the most affected population is the female sex. According to Congresswoman Jennifer Pedraza, who today leads an initiative to end underage marriage in Colombia, in 2020, one in five young people between 15 and 19 years old and one in 50 girls under 14 years old had a union of this type.

It can take years, ten, for example, until the victims manage to escape the circle of violence in which they find themselves. They spend a good part of their lives completely subjected to the will of another, restricted from their freedom and a normal life: many times they cannot study, work, have friends, spend time with family, travel and make decisions about their future, as anyone could do. All this is exchanged for long days of sexual violence and forced labor.

Something like this cannot be overcome in three months. According to the general director and founder of Valientes Colombia, Katherine Jaramillo, the State usually offers psychological support for survivors for just a few months, which is insufficient.

According to the Protocol for Assistance to Victims of Human Trafficking in Colombia of the Espacios de Mujer Corporation, with 15 years of experience in addressing this problem, survivors require immediate assistance – for five days – for their stabilization. This includes accommodation, food, material assistance, medical and psychological assessment, issuance of documents, legal advice and security.

They also need immediate attention – for six months – in which adequate medical and psychological support must be provided; legal and judicial; educational; training, in order to achieve job insertion and human development; and income generation. However, these processes can take years, which can delay the reconstruction of a life project.

Is there justice?

Added to this are the legal challenges they face when trying to achieve justice and see their aggressors behind bars. According to the expert, there are no prosecutors trained in dealing with the crime of servile marriage. For this reason, evidence is often taken poorly, the proceedings last up to three years without much progress, and the survivors, who are forced to narrate what happened more than once, simply wait and resign themselves.

“On day 1 that the victim asks for help, all this information gathering begins and day 600 arrives, (sic) and they say: ‘Oh, no, I'm not going to testify anymore, I mean, two years have passed, I don't even want to see that person anymore, if I have to face them. ’ That happens a lot and then the case is closed,” Jaramillo explained to Infobae Colombia.

In Valientes Colombia, they have received cases that are already closed due to lack of evidence or because the victim did not know that they had to come forward to tell what happened. Even in other processes, over time, the survivors have changed their testimonies; in each story they omit things because they simply wanted to forget them with therapy.

That is why, in several situations, it is identified that their narratives do not match, but it is not because they are lying. However, in cases where a judicial decision is reached, the aggressors are convicted of other crimes, such as sexual abuse by the "partner," and not for human trafficking.

Thus, Valientes Colombia provides support to victims and survivors under 29 years of age in terms of lifestyle and development. It also offers legal assistance, in partnership with international collaborators dedicated to criminal investigation who support the Prosecutor's Office in gathering investigations and evidence. However, they have also had to intervene to rescue Colombian victims of human trafficking who are in other countries.

“Almost 97% of the cases come through social networks; they are cases of women who write to us from Spain, from the United Arab Emirates, saying: ‘this is happening to me’. Or, even, friends who say: ‘my friend is on this side, in this country, at this address; she stopped answering’,” Jaramillo explained.

Those who manage to get out on their own or be rescued are often under threats, not only against their lives, but against the lives of their children. For this reason, sometimes they refrain from reporting out of fear or, in others, they reach the point of having to fight for their custody, since they are left in the hands of their aggressors.

A hope to eradicate early unions

In order to protect the country's girls, boys and adolescents, a bill has been presented that seeks to completely eradicate underage marriage in Colombia, to prevent them from being victims of servile unions and other crimes. However, the 11 times that the initiative has been filed in the Congress of the Republic, it has fallen.

According to Danitza Marantes, this is because other projects have been considered on the Congress agenda, completely relegating the opportunity to debate the issue. She assured that this happened in 2023, because the reforms that the Government of Gustavo Petro has tried to promote have monopolized the attention and discussions of the congressmen.

And, although the fight has not been successful so far, it seems that Colombia is moving towards the definitive eradication of underage marriage and early unions. Well, precisely, Bill 155 of 2023, led by House representatives Alexandra Vásquez and Jennifer Pedraza, was approved on February 27 in the first debate of the First Commission of the House.

“We are happy that the bill has been approved, although we regret that the rapporteur of the initiative, Eduard Sarmiento, of the Historic Pact bench, without taking into account the opinion of the authors, Jennifer and me, has made decisions to denaturalize the object of this, establishing that it is permitted to marry those over 16 years of age when both people are minors, this against the international standards and treaties that the country has ratified,” Vásquez said in a statement.

The need to end this practice also responds to the calls for attention that Colombia has received on the matter at an international level. Lawyer Yadira Alarcón explained to this media that, in 2015, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child spoke out on the matter, warning about the harmfulness of the article in the Colombian Civil Code that allows marriages of minors.

“It must be made clear that psychological maturity and physical and biological maturity of the human being, whether girl or boy, does not arrive until a much older age than 18 years. 18 years is an international standard, but the protection of young people, for example, in Europe, goes up to 26 years,” Alarcón explained to Infobae Colombia.

Therefore, a marriage of minors, as it is known in Colombian law, ends up being, rather, an abuse by an adult towards a minor. “That person is not on equal terms for decision-making, is under the influence of an adult, which makes him a victim (sic). "Allowing marriage between minors puts Colombian children at risk," he said.