Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.11567/met.2025.9
Child marriage among Serbia’s Roma population: A tradition or not?
Dragan Todorović
orcid.org/0000-0001-8006-4212
; University of Niš, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, Niš, Serbia
*
Ivan Đorđević
; Institute of Ethnography, SASA, Belgrade, Serbia
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
According to the UNICEF data from 2019, in the general population of women in Serbia aged 20 to 49 who have been married or are living in a common-law marriage, 7.9% entered their first union before the age of 18. Among their peers from Roma communities, this percentage is as high as 57.2% (UNICEF, 2020: 396).
Marriage among adolescent girls and boys, who are physically and psychosocially immature, uneducated, and economically dependent, can no longer be justified by the specific customs and traditions of a community. Understanding and combating this cultural practice requires an explicit public articulation of its harmful nature, particularly because this practice is forbidden by the Serbian legislative system and is a violation of universal human rights.
The persistence of the practice of the early marriage of Roma girls in the twenty-first century, a phenomenon with multiple harmful consequences for the Roma population, only confirms its complex and multidimensional nature and the necessity of considering it in interaction with numerous social factors, such as poverty, unemployment, education, social norms, customs and gender roles in the community, lack of efficiency among institutions and policy instruments, etc. This paper offers the concept of a marginalized environment as an explanatory framework within which the practice of child marriage among the Roma in Serbia has been functioning and been perpetuated (UNICEF, 2017).
By means of measures aimed to protect Roma children from all forms of neglect, violence, and abuse (formulating and implementing appropriate legal solutions, raising social awareness and providing alternatives to at risk children and their families), state authorities would significantly contribute to reducing existing prejudices against the Roma and empowering members of the Roma community in Serbia for more successful inclusion into Serbian society.
Keywords
Serbia; the Roma; Roma child marriages; concept of marginalized environment
Hrčak ID:
338753
URI
Publication date:
18.11.2025.
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