War and displacement in Gaza are fueling a rise in early marriage

(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)2026-05-29T10:03:47Z DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Majda was destitute. Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Living in a ragged tent in Gaza with rats and the stench of sewage, she couldn’t support her children and feared her daughters would be harassed going to the communal latrine in a camp with hundreds of strangers.So she made a decision she now deeply regrets. She married off her 13- and 14-year-old daughters to men who promised safety and support.“I thought I was protecting them,” she said. “Fear was slaughtering me.” The devastation that Israel’s campaign has wreaked in Gaza has helped fuel an increase in marriages of young girls, according to experts and official data. With almost the entire population driven from their homes, most living in squalid camps and dependent on aid, some parents have sought some financial stability for their teen daughters by giving them away in marriage. For the girls, it meant a loss of their childhood and future — and, often, dangerous pregnancies.For Majda’s daughters, it meant horrific physical abuse. Child marriage was declining before the war Before the war, child marriage had been slowly declining in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In 2022, the last tally released by the bureau, 17.8% of marriages involved a girl under the age of 18, down from more than 22% in 2015.The minimum legal age for marriage in Gaza is 17, with some exceptions allowed; the U.N. and most humanitarian groups categorize marriages of girls under 18 as early marriage. (AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin) (AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin) –> Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. –> Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More That trend appears to have reversed.After an Associated Press request, the Supreme Shariah Court in Gaza, where marriages are registered, gathered data from court employees. According to its figures, 20.6% of the 35,474 marriages recorded in 2024 and 2025 involved a girl under 18, including 627 marriages of girls under 15. Read More The real rate could be much higher because many marriages went unregistered during the chaos of the war, said Amal Siyam, director of the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza. The number of marriage contracts recorded by the court dropped 35% in 2024, the first full year after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war. The AP spoke to six girls in Gaza who got married between 13 and 16 and their parents, all on condition they not be identified by their full names because of the deep sensitivity of the issue. The AP does not identify rape victims. Majda agreed to be identified by only her first name.All of the parents said that if not for the war, they would have never resorted to marrying off their daughters so young.One mother is paralyzed by griefAfter her husband and son were killed in separate strikes in April 2024, Majda descended into severe depression. She begged the doctors for sedatives, which kept her asleep for days at a time. She couldn’t care for her girls in their patched-up tent by the sea, battered by wind, cold and rain in the winter. Charity kitchens, on which they depended for food, were scarce and irregular.“I was entirely shaken from the inside,” Majda said.Two brothers in their 20s, from a family that had been their neighbors in Gaza City before they were all forced to flee, asked to marry her daughters. (AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin) (AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin) –> Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. –> Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Majda, who got married at 14, didn’t want a similar fate for her girls. But her father joined the brothers’ family in insisting it was the only way. They promised, Majda said, that they could sign the marriage contracts but wait until after the war to bring the girls to live with their husbands.“I was not in my right mind. I am still not in my right mind,” Majda said. “I don’t know how I agreed to this.”Majda’s eldest daughter, who was 14 at the time, didn’t want to accept. “I felt lost,” the daughter said. “I thought if I got married, someone would be financially responsible for me … I truly regretted it.” Marriage is seen as a way to ease the family burdenMost of the girls who spoke to the AP said they were not coerced by their parents to marry. But they felt a duty to ease the burden on their families. By marrying, they were counted with their husbands as a separate family to receive aid from relief groups, rather than being under their parents’ allotment. Several girls also said that since schools largely shut down during the war, they saw no hope of continuing their education.One girl sai

(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)2026-05-29T10:03:47Z DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Majda was destitute. Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Living in a ragged tent in Gaza with rats and the stench of sewage, she couldn’t support her children and feared her daughters would be harassed going to the communal…

(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)2026-05-29T10:03:47Z DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Majda was destitute. Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Living in a ragged tent in Gaza with rats and the stench of sewage, she couldn’t support her children and feared her daughters would be harassed going to the communal latrine in a camp with hundreds of strangers.So she made a decision she now deeply regrets. She married off her 13- and 14-year-old daughters to men who promised safety and…