זכותן של ילדות להגנה על ילדותן: המאבק להגבלת גיל הנישואין בפקודת החוק הפלילי 1936-1920

In 1936, following a sixteen-year-long struggle, the Mandate government updated the criminal code ordinance and added a clause outlawing child-marriage in Palestine.The minimum marriage age for girls was set to fifteen. This piece of legislation as well as laws protecting working children, manifest the adamant commitment of reformers and women’s organizations to promote the concept of modern childhood and change the lives of children worldwide. The Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights stood at the forefront of the local effort to criminalize child-marriage.British and Palestinian Arab women also took part in the campaign. For the activists,protecting girls’ childhoods also meant promoting the status of women. The article places the local struggle for the criminalization of child-marriage in the context of the global effort for the promotion of the Right to Childhood. It follows the ebb and flow of the activists’ campaign as it carries global ideas and knowledge about women’s and children’s rights. The article also unveils the human network that enabled the change – local activists and international women’s organizations as well as women of power on both the Imperial and the international stages. The plot demonstrates the agency of women and the ability of an international network to facilitate a change, that the Mandate government wished to evade.