Tashfiah Gulzar guides her audience on the emergence of child marriage and why preventative measures should target both boys and girls to stop this epidemic.
Tashfiah Gulzar
I. Introduction and Literature Review
Historical Background
In 1929, India pioneered the first child marriage legislation in South Asia. Known as the Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA) of 1929 or more commonly as the Sarda Act, this decree was established throughout the entirety of India (1) (excluding the state of Kashmir and Jammu) (2) and thoroughly defined the ages of legal marriage in India at 14 years for females and 18 years for males. Over the years, amendments were made to the Child Marriage Restraint Act. For example, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 was prioritized over the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 regarding child marriage of Muslim girls and would allow females under fourteen years of age to marry with the permission of their father. (3) Such exceptions to the Child Marriage Restraint Act set the precedent for the burgeoning of child marriage throughout South Asia.
Overview of Child Marriage
Although the legal definition of child marriage varies from region to region, a universal definition is utilized by both international governmental and non-governmental organizations: “The term ‘child marriage’ is used to describe a legal or customary union between two people, of whom one or both are below the age of 18.” (4) Eighteen currently marks the age of adulthood as decided by the United Nations. (5) Today, child marriage has spread to the extent that it is often regarded as an epidemic. “According to [the] United Nations Population Fund…nearly one in three (34 percent) young women aged 20-24 years in the developing world (excluding China) is in a marriage or union that occurred before their 18th birthday.” (4) In other words, over a third of women worldwide are married before they are considered biologically and mentally capable. While child marriage is considered harmful to those engaged in it and to their forth coming generations, research from Scolaro et al. strongly indicates that child marriage can be fatal, especially for females: “Child marriage is a human rights violation that robs a
girl of her childhood, puts her health, growth, and development at risk, disrupts her education, limits her opportunities for empowerment and social development, and increases her risk of exposure to violence and abuse.” (4) The life of a girl is at stake from the point that she becomes committed to a child marriage up until her death.
II. Discourse
Case Study: Phulmonee
The case of Phulmonee in 1890 serves as a painful reminder of the consequences of child marriage and is frequently referenced when discussing the concept of child marriage. Phulmonee was an eleven year old girl who had died from a vicious rupture in her vagina after her husband had forcibly penetrated her during sex. (5) Phulmonee’s death spurred a landmark case that established the importance of child marriage and criminal rape laws in India, particularly the criteria for marital rape. Scolaro et al. illustrates, “The age of consent to marriage, the age of legal capacity, and the age of consent to sex are not aligned." (4) In Phulmonee’s case, the law did not protect her because she was about eleven years old, which is one year past the threshold for rape of a child. According to statutory rape laws in India at the time, Phulmonee’s case did not qualify for child-rape despite doctors who had assessed her corpse and insisted that her body was not developed enough to handle such violent penetration. Likewise, Phulmonee was not prepared to be a wife at such a young age, nor was she allowed to make any decisions of her own despite being treated like a “wife.” Her decisions were dictated by her thirty-five year old husband and his family, especially his mother. Phulmonee also did not possess any legal capacity at the time, nor would her case be considered valid even if it occurred today. According to a report by the Center for Reproductive Rights (2013), “In most South Asian countries, rape within marriage is not criminalized, although penal codes do establish a minimum age under which sex with a girl is criminalized.” (6) This escape clause allows husbands to engage in “sex” although the female may have considered it rape and leaves wives especially sexually vulnerable by the very nations which have vowed to protect them as its citizens. Such a loophole in the law also provides adequate room for miscommunication of marital rape laws. While child wives believed that they would be protected by the law for nonconsensual sex with a minor, they were instead villainized by both the law and society and left to return to their attacker when they sought help.
Case Study: Child Marriage Drivers in Bangladesh and Nepal
Such disturbing cases and tragic outcomes for women leave the world grappling with a serious question: if child marriages have proven to be extremely detrimental to the wives involved, why do girls commit to marriage immaturely? Plenty of researchers have answered this question with respect to South Asian perspectives, but a triangulation joint report conducted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Women’s Refugee Commission released in 2020 has analyzed the factors of child marriages for native Bengalis, Rohingya Muslims from the Rakhine State displaced in Bangladesh, and native Nepaleses irrespective of the gender of the spouse involved in the child marriage. This deviation in the primary population of study serves as a turning point for the research of child marriages as males in child marriage are scarcely investigated. Such a vast and severe gap in research allows for a misconstrued conclusion regarding males in child marriages: that the issue is not prevalent enough to be researched. However, this joint study provides evidence that over a tenth of Nepalese boys are married as children (before the age of 18 years) and allows for further understanding of boys in child marriages.
Results from the report revealed that the primary causes of child marriage among native Bengalis included religion, family honor, and security, especially for the bride and her family. (5) Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority nation in which religion is woven into the culture, and hence religious practices are also considered part of the culture. Respect of one’s elders is pivotal in both Islam and in Bengali culture, which has adopted a great deal from Persia regarding Sharia law and the importance of one’s parents in building one’s future. Parents also play a significant role in choosing their children’s life partners. According to current Bengali marriage laws, a girl may marry as early as 14 years old with parental consent, (4) which usually equates to the father’s permission as Bangladesh is a strongly patriarchal society despite Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s efforts to modernize Bangladesh into a female-friendly country.
Contrarily to girls, the marriage of boys in Bangladesh is illegal. In fact, males cannot marry before the age of 21 years with no currently listed exceptions. This raises scrutiny as to how males are in child marriages in Bangladesh. Scolaro et al. provides a few possibilities:
There is still the option of marriages below the legal age of marriage…in this case, the consent of the male and, in most cases, of the female is not requested. Moreover, this requirement is often circumvented by the failure to ensure marriages are registered…the birth and marriage registrations have become mandatory only relatively recently. (4)
In rural areas, many people do not possess identification or birth certificates. A vast portion of those who live in rural areas suffer from poverty, and notarizing birth certificates and other documents may not be a viable option to them due to its lack of affordability. (7) This barrier to registering child marriages only further misconstrues the statistics regarding child marriages in Bangladesh.
Likewise, Rohingya Muslim refugees face the same fate. A statistically significant number of Rohingya Muslims also entered Bangladesh illegally and lack the paperwork to register their dates of
birth nor their marriage certificates. However, data collected from UNICEF's report was not based on official identification, but rather self-identification and discourse. The majority of Rohingya Muslims in the study married prematurely due to protection of the female’s chastity and financial security, as well as a potential increase in aid granted by the Bangladeshi government. Many Rohingya refugees married as children to receive more aid such as food and rations. If a couple married, they would be considered their own household and independent from their families. Hence, they would receive additional rations and would be able to share them with their families.
In a concession to both native Bengalis and Rohingya Muslims, the Nepalese first and foremost married for love, followed by family honor and family tradition. (5) Compared to Bengalis and the Rohingya population, both males and females in Nepal had greater autonomy and tendencies to elope of their own volition. This is due to the cultural opacity among these countries and communities. In Nepal, the child’s relationship with their parents was far less dependent than Rohingya Muslim and native Bengali children. Hence, many parents included in the qualitative interviews in the studies recalled feeling helpless and bitter regarding their children’s marriages since their children typically married for their own happiness. (5)
Nevertheless, the percentage of Nepalese participants who married as youths for family tradition and family honor were far lower than those who married for love despite the prevalence of Hinduism as the majority religion in Nepal. Hinduism, like Islam, stresses the importance of respecting one’s parents. Yet, the study cites that due to the rise of social media, the dominance of Hinduism in Nepalese youth culture has waned greatly. (5) This presents another potential driver of child marriage in Nepal: social media.
Case Study: Rahar Maya Biswokarma
If children are married immaturely, they also do not have the adequate mindset to support each other as husband and wife. The case study of Nepali Rahar Maya Biswokarma is a strong example of that. Both Biswokarma and her husband were married to each other since they were children- Biswokarma at 10 years old, and her husband at 15 years old:
"I was turned into someone´s wife before I knew what it meant to me,” says Rahar Maya, now a mother of four grownup children, all of them married. "Perhaps, I’ll regret getting married early throughout my life, until my death…" Rahar Maya says her husband, too, was not mature enough to stand by her when she needed his support and sympathy. “Whenever my mother-in-law berated me, I would seek his emotional support,” she says. “But he would always fail me.” She says she often felt lonely—already discarded by her parents and yet not fully accepted by her husband as well as the parents-in-law… (6)
Biswokarma’s statement is only one example of the emotional disconnect between two people who were married as children. Neither of them possessed the mental capacity to fulfill their duties as husband and wife and therefore should not have married if they could not make adequate decisions for themselves. If two individuals lacked the level of emotional development to understand each other, their relationship has a very high probability of transforming into a toxic one that could fatally harm both the husband and the wife.
The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations
Referring back to Scolaro et al.’s definition of child marriage, child marriage can consist of both underage females as well as their less widely discussed counterparts: males. As discussed previously, there is an immense research gap between the child marriages of males and females. Little to no data s available regarding boys in child marriages, which paints a vague and inaccurate image of child marriage in South Asia. Consequently, the majority of legislation and conventions held by both regional and international non-governmental organizations primarily target women despite the growing prevalence of boys in child marriages. A report by UNICEF et al. illustrates that non-governmental organizations fail to provide adequate services to boys in child unions, such as education and community amenities and facilities:
Of the 1,431 adolescent survey respondents, 94.2 per cent of boys and 88.3 per cent of girls indicated that they had been to a health clinic in the area. Quantitative analysis found that boys were slightly more likely to access health services. However, qualitative analysis found that the health services provided tend to be targeted towards women, with health posts providing “pregnancy tests, family planning devices, and pregnancy related services…” (5)
The probability of males receiving health services is much higher than that of women due to imposed social standards. Women are expected to stay home and take care of the children while it is anticipated that men either further their education or seek employment. The current approaches of large and reputable international organizations like UNICEF and the UN to market to parties involved in child marriage are unsuccessful since they do not provide appropriate services and education for men regarding sex and pregnancy, family dynamics, or other applicable issues.
Government Legislation
The lack of proper education and services provided by non-governmental organizations leaves a vast amount of legislation to be passed by the governments tackling immature unions. In 2006, India amended the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act to penalize those involved in arranging child marriages, such as neighborhood elders, parents, and other individuals. This is only applicable if they are caught before the wedding takes place. (8) Once the wedding is complete, however, the other parties are not held accountable. The only alternative is provided to girls who married before the age of 15 in India under the Hindu Marriage Act. This law states that wives may void the marriage before they reach 18 years of age. (6) Nepal, unlike India, offers both the husband and wife the option to repudiate child marriages at any age, but only before they have children. This law can be attributed to Nepal’s relatively greater child marriage rate of both girls and boys in contrast to India, where premature unions are typically more prevalent among girls.
India’s state of West Bengal which has the highest number of child marriages annually in the country, attempted to eliminate the practice of child marriage of girls altogether. In 2013, the West Bengal government, under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, decreed an initiative called Kanyashree Prakalpa. This program would provide girls from lower income backgrounds with a cash incentive from childhood until they reached the post-graduate level. The program was created to encourage the education of girls as a means of preventing child marriages. (8) In addition to Kanyashree Prakalpa, the Mamata Banerjee government introduced Rupashree, which took a much more direct approach to tackling the child marriage of young girls. This scheme would provide girls with a lump-sum payment if they remained unmarried at 18 years old. Nevertheless, these programs do not attempt to quell child marriage among boys and does not address males in child marriages at all. It is understandable that the occurence of child marriage is higher in girls than boys, however, disregarding the well-being of boys in child marriage is unjust and paints an inaccurate picture of child marriage that only consists of girls.
Informal Initiatives
Due to the continuous failures of legislative and non-governmental organizations, informal organizations have emerged to counteract the prevalence of child marriages, specifically in West Bengal. One informal organization is Hashi Kushi Dhol, a group of young elementary-aged and teenage girls who act in play performances with a core message discouraging child marriages. (8) Both men and women of various ages are typically present to witness these plays, although women tend to have higher attendance than men. Nevertheless, the goal of Hashi Kushi Dhol is not only to educate men, women, girls, and boys about the dangers and immorality of early marriage, but to direct them to the police and non-governmental organizations if they believe that they may be entering a child marriage illegally. Additionally, members of Hashi Kushi Dhol also utilize their young age and close-knit community of girls to their advantage. Should a girl from the community, such as a friend or neighbor, hear of an underaged girl’s marriage being arranged, she discovers the time and location of the wedding and informs Hashi Kushi Dhol. Hashi Kushi Dhol will then attempt to stop the marriage from occurring and call for the respective authorities such as non-governmental officers or teachers. (8) This method has proven to be very successful in Malda, where Hashi Kushi Dhol is based. The organization has stopped dozens of marriages over the past few years and has therefore saved the potential child brides from great misfortune.
UNICEF has also installed a forum in Malda where young school-aged girls are to report the occurrences of child-marriages to the police. Much like Hashi Kushi Dhol, they will halt the wedding to the best of their ability. (8) This tactic of stopping the wedding is on average a successful one, but should be a last-minute resort method, since it does not stop the root of the problem– it merely stalls the wedding until the authorities are present.
III. Conclusions and Further Discourse
Today, child marriage remains a raging epidemic that has yet to cease in progress. While both regional governmental and non-overnmental organizations are attempting to pass legislation and fund programs to prevent child marriage, not all of these programs are proving to be beneficial. In fact, many of these programs do not target the lesser-mentioned male gender in regard to child marriage and continue to put boys at risk of not only marrying immaturely, but also suffering from the consequences of child marriage that can impact them their entire life. A great deal of further research will be necessary in order to create viable programs that suit males in addition to females.
IV. Notes
1. United Nations Human Rights- Office of the High Commissioner. “Child and Forced Marriage, Including in Humanitarian Settings.” United Nations Human Rights- Office of the High Commissioner, 18 Jan. 2010, www.ohchr.org/en/issues/women/wrgs/pages/childmarriage.aspx.
2. At the time that the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed, Kashmir and Jammu were not protected by the Indian Constitution and were considered princely states under British rule. Hence, the Child Marriage Restraint Act was not recognized there.
3. Abdullahi A. An-Na’im. “Islamic Family Law » Bangladesh, People’s Republic Of.” Islamic Family Law- Emory University, 2015, scholarblogs.emory.edu/islamic-family-law/home/research/legal-profiles/bangladesh-people%EF%BF%BDs-republic-of.
4. Elisa Scolaro et al. “Child Marriage Legislation in the Asia-Pacific Region.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, vol. 13, no. 3, 2015, pp. 23–31. Crossref, doi:10.1080/15570274.2015.1075759.
5. UNICEF, et al. “Child Marriage in Humanitarian Settings in South Asia Study Results from Bangladesh and Nepal.” UNICEF South Asia, 2020, www.unicef.org/rosa/reports/child-marriage-humanitarian-settings-south-asia.
6. Center for Reproductive Rights. “Child Marriage in South Asia: Stop the Impunity.” Center for Reproductive Rights, 2013. Google Scholar, reproductiverights.org/child-marriage-in-south-asia-stop-the-impunity-press-release
7. The cost for notarizing a birth or marriage certificate is approximately 4,321 taka (or approximately $50 based on the currency exchange rate of 86.44 takas per dollar as of the week of December 19, 2021). This is about the cost of rent of a studio apartment in the capital city, Dhaka, per month.
8. “Child Marriage in India: Teenage Girls Forced to Marry.” YouTube, uploaded by VICE Asia, 2 Mar. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pttHSJCl4Ks&feature=youtu.be.
References
1.An-Na’im, Abdullahi A. “Islamic Family Law » Bangladesh, People’s Republic Of.” Islamic Family Law- Emory University, 2015, scholarblogs.emory.edu/islamic-family-law/home/research/legal-profiles/bangladesh-people%EF%BF%BDs-republic-of.
2. Center for Reproductive Rights. “Child Marriage in South Asia: Stop the Impunity.” Center for Reproductive Rights, 2013. Google Scholar, reproductiverights.org/child-marriage-in-south-asia-stop-the-impunity-press-release.
3. “Child Marriage in India: Teenage Girls Forced to Marry.” YouTube, uploaded by VICE Asia, 2 Mar. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pttHSJCl4Ks&feature=youtu.be.
4. “Notarial Services for All Nationalities.” U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh, 11 Oct. 2021, bd.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/local-resources-of-u-s-citizens/notaries-public.
5. Scolaro, Elisa, et al. “Child Marriage Legislation in the Asia-acific Region.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs, vol. 13, no. 3, 2015, pp. 23–31. Crossref, doi:10.1080/15570274.2015.1075759.
5. United Nations Human Rights- Office of the High Commissioner. “Child and Forced Marriage, Including in Humanitarian Settings.” United Nations Human Rights- Office of the High Commissioner, 18 Jan. 2010, www.ohchr.org/en/issues/women/wrgs/pages/childmarriage.aspx.
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