PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Henry Herrera
Telephone: +1-301-801-0608
Email: info@menandboys.net
UN Urged to Confront the Worldwide Retreat from Marriage
June 17, 2026 — Across much of the world, far fewer adults are getting married. But no United Nations agency has responded to this development as the social disaster it has become. The International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) is now calling on the UN to confront a trend it has long ignored.
Worldwide, the marriage rate plummeted by half between 1970 and 2020 (1). The decline spans every region:
- Africa: In South Africa, registered marriages fell by nearly half in 15 years (2).
- Asia: China recorded 6.1 million marriages in 2024, roughly 55% below its 2013 peak. Japan and South Korea recorded similar lows — an East Asian “marriage strike” (3, 4).
- Europe: In Spain, the marriage rate fell from 5.4 per 1,000 in 2000 to 1.9 by 2020, a collapse that followed a 2004 domestic-violence law under which most of those accused — overwhelmingly men — were later cleared (5).
- Latin America: Marriage is giving way to cohabitation, and in several countries — including Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia — more than 60% of children are now born outside marriage (6).
One UN agency has gone so far as to cast the traditional family as harmful; UN Women has called it the most dangerous place for women and girls (7). Yet in truth, domestic violence is lowest among couples in stable, intact marriages (8).
The decline in marriage also feeds the worldwide collapse in birth rates. Marriage precedes most childbearing, and experts say fertility will not recover until marriage returns to earlier levels (9). Rebuilding marriage is the gateway to reversing the birth crisis.
Fortunately, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) marked the International Year of the Family’s 30th anniversary in 2024 (10). But DESA programs focus on caregiving and work-family balance, not on why fewer people marry or how to help them form lasting families — issues that DESA’s own 2011 study of men and families once highlighted (11).
ICMB calls on the United Nations and its member states to:
- Recognize the global decline in marriage as a serious societal problem, not a private matter beyond the UN’s purview.
- Direct DESA to work to reverse the decline of marriage and family formation.
- Report family-formation and family-stability outcomes among the indicators that the UN already tracks.
The family is the foundation of every society. We urge the United Nations to study it, measure it, and defend it.
This is the first of three statements following ICMB’s June 10 call to revive the traditional family, addressing marriage, birth rates, and fathers in turn.
The International Council for Men and Boys is a non-governmental organization working to end the 12 sex disparities that affect men and boys worldwide. The ICMB is a leader of the emerging global movement to address these disparities. https://www.menandboys.net/
Links:
1. https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces
2. https://www.nrf.ac.za/global-decline-in-marriage-rates-with-a-focus-on-south-africa/
3. https://www.cfr.org/blog/marriages-china-crash-portending-deeper-demographic-woes
4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42379-025-00191-w
5. https://endtodv.org/pr/marriage-crisis-in-spain-linked-to-viogen-domestic-violence-law/
6. https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/out-wedlock-births-rise-worldwide
7. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2022/11/press-release-women-and-girls-are-more-at-risk-to-be-killed-at-home-new-unodc-and-un-women-report-on-femicide-shows
8. https://endtodv.org/pr/marriage-is-one-of-the-strongest-safeguards-against-domestic-abuse-is-the-istanbul-convention-helping-or-hurting/
9. https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/saving-america-saving-the-family-foundation-the-next-250-years
10. https://social.desa.un.org/issues/family
11. https://desapublications.un.org/publications/men-families-and-family-policy-changing-world
