Globally, the annual number of child marriages is estimated at 14.2 million (2019) and it is mainly girls who are affected by this practice.

In Morocco, the Ministry of Justice registered 32,104 applications for child marriage in 2018, compared to 30,312 in 2006. Between 2011 and 2018, 85% of marriage applications resulted in an authorization. 94.8% of all unions involving minors concern girls (45,786). and 99% of marriage applications were for girls in the 2007-2018 period.

The situation would be all the more alarming, since only legal child marriage applications and legally contracted marriages are taken into account by the statistics of the Ministry of Justice. Informal marriages of children known as "Orfi" or "Al Fatiha" marriages or the so-called "contract marriages" between men often living abroad and fathers for sums of money do not appear in any of the official statistics.

The CESE report proposes a reflection aimed at seeking the universal causes of this practice, and has led researchers to make the link with other equally universal dimensions, namely inequality between men and women, gender discrimination, patriarchy, lack of education, social exclusion and poverty.

The analysis focuses on the causes, consequences, structures and challenges around the perpetuation of child marriage around the world, with an in-depth focus on Morocco.