Much as the nation strives to bring an end to child marriage, the unlawful matrimony continues in this country. The consequences of such premature marriage for underage girls with adult youths or men are devastating. It is the brides who pay the heaviest price. The girls given off to such marriage are not even asked for their consent. In that sense, their marriage is used as a societal sanction for premature sex and even sexual violence. Thus they lose their right to their bodies and minds.
In this context, a global report prepared by the Plan International has shed light on yet another highly disturbing aspect of child marriage. According to it, one in three such girls wedded prematurely is now divorced. Their life is that of social outcasts. The State of the World's Girls Report 2025 titled "Let me be a child not a wife: Girls' experience of living through child marriage" prepared by the Plan International paints a bleak global picture of girls. It had gathered information from 15 countries including Bangladesh. Divorced girls face social isolation and financial hardship. Even their poor parents who thought that marriage would be of help to offload a burden are now doubly burdened.
Here the gender discrimination could not be more vivid. Unwanted by the family of their marriage and also by the parental family, the girls run the risk of falling victim to impulsive acts. Their social security compromised and life and livelihoods devastated, the girls find their existence inconsequential. This is where girls are pushed to although they never were a party to the whole deplorable episode.
There is no doubt that it is a hostile world in which girls from poor family background find themselves. How hostile it can be is best illustrated by the sexual violence underage girls are subjected to. When girls below six or 12 years old suffer the sexual aggression, the traumatic experience lasts for their entire life.
The International Day of the Girl Child observed on October 11 against the backdrop of rise in sexual violence against girls in Bangladesh this year should give the nation enough cause for confronting this sickening reality. An 83 per cent rise in rape of girl children in the first nine months of this year---367 cases as against 195 in 2024---is indeed a chilling development. Cases of attempted rape increased by 163 per cent or nearly 2.6 times. Both numbers are likely to be higher because many such cases go unreported.
Even the reported cases are enough to set the alarm bell ringing. Higher incidence of sexual aberration has its snowballing impacts on a people. Women and girls are soft targets with the underage among them being more vulnerable to sex predators. Evidently, girls are neither safe in their parents' home nor in the new family of their husbands. They have not the freedom of deciding when to marry or when to have babies. There should have been forces strong enough to ensure that the sex predators have no space in society.
Decline in law and order has much to do with the rise in sex crime. When elements with doubtful characters see that laws are violated with impunity, they feel encouraged to explore limits of their aggressive conducts including sexual violence. The offenders hope they can as well go scot-free after committing the crime. Then, there is the easy access to prurient social sites which can incite sex drive of young people.
Unless the discriminatory social structure is dismantled and poor families are helped to avoid marrying their daughters off early, it is impossible to fight sex offences on both fronts. Child marriage and sexual violence are in fact two sides of the same coin. Both demand awakening of minds through a consistent social campaign. Allocation of fund like the one girls from poor families receive for their education can help contain child marriage. Local communities need to be organised and stand as sentinels against sexual aberration.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com
