Govt urged to scrap proposal to lower girls’ marriage age limit

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called upon the Bangladesh government on Tuesday for scraping its proposal to lower the age limit of marriage for girls to 16 years from 18.
Citing a UNICEF study, the New York-based international rights group in its latest report said Bangladesh has the highest rate of child marriage of girls in the world where 29 per cent of girls are married before the age of 15 and two per cent are married before the age of 11.
"The Bangladesh government is yet to take sufficient steps to end child marriage, in spite of promises to do so," the 134-page report said.
Instead, in steps in the wrong direction, after her July, 2014 pledge to end child marriage by 2041, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attempted to lower the age of marriage for girls from 18 to 16 years, raising serious doubts about her commitment, it said.
"Child marriage is an epidemic in Bangladesh, and only worsens with natural disasters," said Heather Barr, senior researcher on women's rights. "The Bangladesh government has said some of the right things, but its proposal to lower the age of marriage for girls sends the opposite message. The government should act before another generation of girls is lost."
The report titled 'Marry Before Your House is Swept Away: Child Marriage in Bangladesh,' is based on more than a hundred interviews conducted across the country, most of them with married girls, some as young as age 10.   
It documents the factors driving child marriage in Bangladesh - including poverty, natural disasters, lack of access to education, social pressure, harassment, and dowry.
The HRW report also details the damage that child marriage does to the lives of girls and their families in Bangladesh, including the discontinuation of secondary education, serious health consequences including death as a result of early pregnancy, abandonment, and domestic violence from spouses and in-laws.
Child marriage has been illegal in Bangladesh since 1929, and the minimum age of marriage has been set at 18 for women and 21 for men since the 1980s. In spite of this, Bangladesh has the fourth-highest rate in the world of child marriage before the age 18, after Niger, the Central African Republic, and Chad, the report said, adding that sixty-five per cent of girls in Bangladesh marry before age 18.
"The Bangladesh government should follow through vigorously and promptly on the public commitments Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made to end child marriage," Barr said. "The first step should be to back away immediately from the proposal to lower the age of marriage for girls to 16."
Also blaming the natural disaster behind the child marriage, the report finding said many families are pushed by disasters into deepening poverty, which further increases the risk of early marriage.
It said families described feeling under pressure to arrange marriages quickly for their young daughters in the wake of a disaster, or in the anticipation of one.
"This was particularly common among families who faced losing their home and land through the gradual destruction caused by river erosion," it said.
According to the report findings, the Bangladesh government is failing to take effective action against child marriage although the Prime Minister outlined a series of steps, including reform of the law and development of a national plan of action by the end of 2014 to stop child marriage at the latest international Girl Summit held in London, United Kingdom.
Neither of these steps has been achieved. Worse yet, the Bangladesh government has taken a step to lower the minimum age of marriage for girls from 18 to 16 years, it said.
The report also hailed success story the country made in the area of women's rights, impressive poverty reduction, gender parity in primary and secondary school enrollment and maternal mortality.
"The Bangladesh government's inaction on child marriage is causing devastating harm to one of the country's greatest assets - its young women," said Barr. "The government-and its donors-should do more to keep girls in school, assist girls at risk of child marriage, fight sexual harassment, and provide access to reproductive health information and contraceptive supplies. Most importantly, the government should enforce its own law against child marriage."
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