Child Marriages

Campaign: "Join Hands to prevent Child Marriages"

KWO is launching a campaign “Join hands to prevent child marriages” to prevent child marriages. It is extended campaign of end violence against women.

• Child marriage is spoiling the basic rights of young girls including education and health (physical, mental, reproductive
• It causes domestic violence and HIV/AIDS

We want

• The minimum age of girl for marriage should be 18 years which is 16 years in child marriage act 1929. In current era, it is really difficult for young girls to fulfill responsibilities of marriage before age of 18.

• The existed law which ensures 16 years minimum age for a girl to marry should be implemented strictly. As, public is use to break at regularly.

• The punishment for a child marriage is one month imprisonment or a fine of Rs. 1,000, which is too negligible for the parties undertaking such actions to be concerned. It was therefore felt that the penalties should be increased to match the crime. 

• Gender sensitive messages should be in curriculum to aware people in early age about women & young girl rights

• Illiteracy rate should be increased to aware people

The Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 , Pakistan

Child marriage in Pakistan is legally prohibited to an extent under the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 (No XIX). Under the Act, the minimum age for marriage is 18 years for a male and 16 years for a female (section 2) . Contravention is punishable with a fine of Rs.1000 and an imprisonment of one month or both for

· An adult male (above 18 years of age) who contracts marriage with a child (section 4) .

· A person who solemnizes a child marriage (section 5) .

· A parent or guardian who does not act to prevent a child marriage (section 6) .

The 1929 Act is one of those few laws on the statute books that were introduced by the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, while he was a member of the British India Legislative Assembly. It was passed on October 1, 1929, to restrain the solemnization of child marriages and applied to the whole of India effective April 1, 1930. It still remains in force, and extends to the whole of Pakistan. It applies to, both Muslim and Non-Muslim, citizens of Pakistan, and regardless of whether they are resident in Pakistan or elsewhere.

Prior to the 1929 Act, the Age of Consent Act in 1892 was enacted which laid down the age below which a marriage should not be consummated. Child marriages however continued unabated. It was in order to control this menace that the 1929 Act was enacted. The purpose of the Act, as its title signifies, is to restrain the solemnization of child marriages. Child was originally defined in the Act to mean a "person who, if a male, is under 14 years of age, and if a female, is under 12 years of age." The age was subsequently raised. The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 (No VIII) effective July 15, 1961, raised the age of girl child in the Act from 14 to 16 years of age; and lowered the age of male from 21 to 18 years to the extent of the Muslim citizens; this means that the age for the non-Muslim citizens remains the same as prior to the 1961 Amendment. The Act, after being amended by the 1961 Ordinance, states that, whoever being a male above 18 years of age, contracts a marriage with a girl child of less than 16 years, shall be punishable with simple imprisonment extending up to one month, or with fine extending up to Rs 1000, or with both. .

Additionally whoever performs, conducts or directs any child marriage, defined as marriage to which either of the contracting parties is a child, is punishable with simple imprisonment extending up to one month, or fine extending up to Rs 1000, or with both, unless he proves that he had reason to believe that the marriage was not a child marriage. Similarly, any person having charge of the minor contracting a child marriage, whether as parent or guardian or in any other capacity, lawful or unlawful,

· who does any act to promote the marriage; or

· permits it to be solemnized; or

· negligently fails to prevent it from being solemnized;



is punishable with simple imprisonment extending up to one month, or with, fine extending up to Rs 1000, or with both, provided that no woman is punishable with imprisonment. For purposes of this section of the Act, it will be presumed under law, unless and until the contrary is proved, that where a minor has contracted a child marriage, the person having charge of such minor has negligently failed to prevent the marriage from being solemnized. No court other than Magistrate of the first class can take cognizance of, or try, any offense under the Act. However even he cannot take cognizance after the expiry of one year from the date on which the offense is alleged to have been committed; and unless, except in Punjab, a complaint is made by the union council within whose jurisdiction a child marriage is or is about to be solemnized, or if there is no union council in the area by such authority as the provincial government may in this behalf prescribe.In cases where the court is satisfied from information laid before it through a complaint or otherwise that a child marriage has been arranged or is about to be solemnized, the court may issue an injunction against any of male contracting the marriage; or the persons involved in the performance, conduct or direction of the child marriage; or the persons having charge of the minor whether as parent or guardian or in any other capacity whether lawful or unlawful. No injunction, however, can be issued unless the court has previously given notice to the person concerned, and has afforded him an opportunity to show cause against the issue of the injunction. Such an injunction order can also be rescinded or altered by the court. Disobedience of the injunction order is punishable with imprisonment extending up to three months, or with fine extending up to Rs 1000, or with both, provided that no woman can be punished under this section of the Act.

Child marriage is defined as a formal marriage or informal union entered into by an individual before reaching the age of 18. While child marriage is observed for both boys and girls, the overwhelming majority of those affected by the practice are girls, most of who are in poor socioeconomic situations. It is related to child betrothal and teenage pregnancy.

CHILD MARRIAGE AROUND THE WORLD

• One third of the world’s girls are married before the age of 18 and 1 in 9 are married before the age of 15. 

•  In 2010, 67 million women 20-24 around the world had been married before the age of 18. 

•  If present trends continue, 142 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday over the next decade. That’s an average of 14.2 million girls each year. 

•  While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides resides in South Asia.

POVERTY AND CHILD MARRIAGE

• Girls living in poor households are almost twice as likely to marry before 18 than girls in higher income households.
• More than half of the girls in Bangladesh, Mali, Mozambique and Niger are married before age 18. In these same countries, more than 75 percent of people live on less than $2 a day.

EDUCATION AND CHILD MARRIAGE

§  Girls with higher levels of schooling are less likely to marry as children. In Mozambique, some 60 percent of girls with no education are married by 18, compared to 10 percent of girls with secondary schooling and less than one percent of girls with higher education.

§  Educating adolescent girls has been a critical factor in increasing the age of marriage in a number of developing countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.

HEALTH AND CHILD MARRIAGE

§  Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death worldwide for girls ages 15 to 19.

§  Child brides face a higher risk of contracting HIV because they often marry an older man with more sexual experience. Girls ages 15 – 19 are 2 to 6 times more likely to contract HIV than boys of the same age in sub-Saharan Africa.

VIOLENCE AND CHILD MARRIAGE

§  Girls who marry before 18 are more likely to experience domestic violence than their peers who marry later. A study conducted by ICRW in two states in India found that girls who were married before 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped or threatened by their husbands than girls who married later.

§  Child brides often show signs symptomatic of sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress such as feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and severe depression.

RELIGION AND CHILD MARRIAGE

§  No one religious affiliation was associated with child marriage, according to a 2007 ICRW study. Rather, a variety of religions are associated with child marriage in countries throughout the world.

Rank	Country Name	% girls married before 18
1	Niger	75
2	Chad	68
3	Central African Republic	68
4	Bangladesh	66
5	Guinea	63
6	Mozambique	56
7	Mali	55
8	Burkina Faso	52
9	South Sudan	52
10	Malawi	50
11	Madagascar	48
12	Eritrea	47
13	India	47
14	Somalia	45
15	Sierra Leone	44
16	Zambia	42
17	Dominican Republic	41
18	Ethiopia	41
19	Nepal	41
20	Nicaragua	41

reference: http://www.icrw.org/