At What Age...? Comparative table

Minimum age for when school-children can be employed, married and taken to court?

The information presented in the table below permits easy comparison of minimum ages in different countries. It is a preview of the updated version of At What Age...? and reflects analysis of states parties’ reports to the CRC Committee between 1993 and January 2013. For details, please consult our country database. Please note that our country database has recently been updated, and now covers the reporting period 2010 - 2013.

Please also see a note on scope and methodology for this table at the bottom of this page.

LEGENDA

X = information unavailable     

? = information unclear      

° = information from dialogue 

 * = see report for details      

n/c = not compulsory 

^ = Country reports coming from the pre-session only 

Bold = Countries updated between 2010 - 2013       

This table summarises results of a great deal of research, based on an analysis of States Parties' reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. For the full country-by-country analysis, please visit our country database. This was updated in January 2013 to include information collected for the period 2010-2013.

First published in 2002, At What Age…? included States Parties’ reports submitted between January 1997 and August 2002. In 2004 it was revised to include reports from August 2002 to January 2004. It has recently been updated to cover 18 years of monitoring (1993-2010), and therefore offers a timely occasion to assess if the international community has “come of age” with respect to its treatment of minors.

State reports are the primary source for this research, accounting for more than 98% of the information harvested. Where clear minimum ages were not included in these reports, the dialogue between States Parties and the Committee was consulted through Summary Records, Written Replies, and Concluding Observations issued for the relevant monitoring session. The decision to rely mainly on States Parties’ reports was taken for two reasons. Firstly, these reports constitute public self-assessment by governments and are consequently an authoritative source, emanating directly from those empowered to make decisions. This type of analysis therefore permits a range of actors to hold governments accountable for the standards which they themselves report under the CRC. Secondly, using the interaction between States and the Committee allows both inter-national comparison and a world-wide overview of the global direction of children’s rights implementation, as all States - except for Somalia and the US - are bound by the same process.  

Whilst the reports of non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, as well as academic material or field work, would undoubtedly provide an important and insightful counterfoil to the sources used here, they have been omitted in the interests of uniformity. Not all reviews include alternative reports, nor do all States allow genuine NGO work and participation. Additionally, examining only those countries for which shadow reports are available would not do justice to the desire to develop inter-national comparison and global analysis. Ultimately, the rationale was to develop a methodology that could be applied universally. 

However, this does not mean that the research methodology was any easier. Comparing different ages across countries or even within the same country is a difficult task, and inferring a precise number from a general description is a dangerous exercise. Collecting, analysing and interpreting information from States Parties’ reports requires a great deal of care, thought and patience. Individual country reports are often more than one hundred pages long, and written by diverse parts of the government - not always in close consultation with one another. Moreover, within some States’ legal systems there are various recognised sources of law which frequently generate conflicting minimum ages, further complicating the task of distilling a single age from the information provided.  

Another equally serious challenge relates to transparency and/or lack of information. Firstly, there is a danger that those countries with a more honest engagement with the reporting process might come off worse when compared with those which would misrepresent the degree of compliance, whether wilfully or not. Secondly, failure to report is also difficult to interpret as it may indicate an indirect recognition of inconsistent practices (i.e. information on a specific age may at times not be included in an attempt to mask violations), a lacuna in domestic monitoring, or simply an oversight. For the purposes of this research, however, and in the best interest of children, it has been assumed that if no minimum age is included in the reports of a State party, none exists there in practice. 

In order to maintain coherence, the following methodology has been followed uniformly to arrive at the interpretations presented in the summary table. Where no information is provided, this is indicated by a cross (X); where the information is available but not sufficiently clear, or is self-contradictory, a question mark (?) is used. A star (*) indicates a proposed change in legislation, a division of competence in federal States, or a particular exception or practice that begs closer scrutiny. Where the information comes from the Concluding Observations, Summary Records or Written Replies, a circle (°) is used. Otherwise, the information provided in the reports is translated into a precise number or "no minimum" for each specific case according to the respective guiding criteria.

Reports and other sources have been reproduced faithfully, and where information has been omitted as it was judged irrelevant this is clearly indicated in the following manner: […]. For a fully authoritative record, readers are encouraged to make use of the original text, available on the website of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, following document symbols and paragraph references given for each report.