Bangladesh must ramp up efforts to tackle its “epidemic” of child marriage – a problem fuelled by the country’s repeated natural disasters, rights campaigners said on Tuesday.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called on the government to ditch a proposal to lower the legal marriage age for girls from 18 to 16, which it said undermined the Bangladesh prime minister’s recent pledge to end child marriage.
Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage, with two thirds of girls ending up as child brides. Nearly 30 per cent wed before their 15th birthday and many are much younger.
Although child marriage is illegal, the law is widely flouted, with officials often forging birth certificates to facilitate underage marriages for small bribes, HRW said in a report, ‘Marry Before Your House is Swept Away’.
Densely populated Bangladesh suffers frequent flooding and other natural disasters. The rights group said floods, cyclones and river erosion exacerbate child marriage by pushing families into greater poverty.
“Child marriage is an epidemic in Bangladesh, and only worsens with natural disasters,” said Heather Barr, an HRW researcher on women’s rights.
“The government should act before another generation of girls is lost.” Officials from the ministry of women and child affairs did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment on Monday.
At a global summit on child marriage in London last year, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina pledged to end the marriage of girls under 15 by 2021 and all child marriages by 2041.
But campaigners say moves to allow girls to marry at 16 raise doubts about her commitment. A revised version of the original proposal would keep 18 as the legal age, but allow exceptions with parental consent. As most marriages are arranged by parents, campaigners say this would still amount to lowering the age to 16.
At the summit, Hasina also pledged a national action plan on child marriage, but HRW said this had not happened.
