Skip to content
Center for Reproductive Rights
Center for Reproductive Rights

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • #TheForwardFight
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Pro Bono Program
    • Creative Council
    • Annual Reports
    • Contact Us
    • Careers
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
    • Global Advocacy
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Events
    • Press Releases
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Make a Gift Now
    • Be a Champion
    • Join the Advocates Council
    • Become a Major Donor
    • Give Through Your Donor-Advised Fund
    • Make a Gift In Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Leave a Legacy
    • More Ways to Give
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
Donate
icon-hamburger icon-magnifying-glass Donate
icon-magnifying-glass-teal

Combatting Child Marriage

Center for Reproductive Rights - Center for Reproductive Rights - search logo
search Close Close icon
Center for Reproductive Rights -
Menu Close Menu Close icon
Donate

Primary Menu

  • About
    • Overview
    • #TheForwardFight
    • Center Leadership & Staff
    • Pro Bono Program
    • Creative Council
    • Annual Reports
    • Contact Us
    • Careers
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
  • Work
    • Overview
    • Litigation
    • Legal Policy and Advocacy
    • Resources & Research
    • Recent Case Highlights
    • Landmark Cases
    • Cases Archive
    • World’s Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Issues
    • Overview
    • Abortion
    • Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
    • Assisted Reproduction
    • Contraception
    • Humanitarian Settings
    • Maternal Health
    • COVID-19
  • Regions
    • Overview
    • Africa
    • Asia
    • Europe
    • Latin America and the Caribbean
    • United States
    • Global Advocacy
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Center in the Spotlight
    • Events
    • Press Releases
    • Press Room
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Resources & Research
    • World Abortion Laws Map
    • After Roe Fell: Abortion Laws by State
  • Act
    • Overview
    • Give
    • Act
    • Learn
  • Donate
    • Make a Gift Now
    • Be a Champion
    • Join the Advocates Council
    • Become a Major Donor
    • Give Through Your Donor-Advised Fund
    • Make a Gift In Honor
    • Attend an Event
    • Leave a Legacy
    • More Ways to Give
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Related Content

Issues:

Adolescent SRHR

Regions:

Asia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

Work:

Reporting on Rights

Type:

News, Story

Follow the Center

Donate Now

Join Now

07.24.2014

Reporting on Rights Adolescent SRHR Asia News

Combatting Child Marriage

Justin Goldberg

Share this Story

  • facebook
  • Twitter
  • linkedin
  • Email id
Combatting Child Marriage
reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ChildMarriage_thumb.jpg

The numbers are disturbing. According to a recent UNICEF study, one in nine girls in the developing world will marry before age 15, one in three will marry before 18. Some are as young as eight. Child marriage remains an all-too-common reality throughout large swaths of the world—particularly South Asia. And the repercussions are often devastating—both for the young girls and for their communities.



Early marriage usually ends a girl’s education. It leaves her vulnerable to sexually contracted diseases as well as domestic violence and marital rape as a result of the power imbalance in the relationship. It also exposes her to life-threatening complications. Girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth compared to women over 20. The risk is far greater for girls under 15.



The Center for Reproductive Rights has been working to combat the ravages of child marriage through legal advocacy. This week, this important issue takes center stage in London at the Girl Summit 2014, a first-ever event co-hosted by Unicef and the British government aimed at rallying efforts to end the practice of child marriage, as well as female genital mutilation, within a generation. 



“The Girl Summit reminds us that much more needs to be done by governments across the world to end the egregious practice of child marriage and stronger action is needed to achieve this goal,” says Melissa Upreti, the Center’s Regional Director for Asia. “Governments must step up their efforts to end the impunity surrounding child marriage by using the law and legal institutions to effectively deter child marriage and to provide legal remedies to girls and women who suffer from its consequences. This includes not allowing religion to be used as a justification for the practice.”



The Girls Summit comes on the heels of a promising development in India, where—despite the country’s Prohibition of Child Marriage Act of 2006, it is estimated that a third of child marriages take place. This June, following testimony from human rights groups—including a shadow letter authored by the Center and our partners, the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN)—the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued Concluding Observations urging India to take measures “to ensure the effective implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act,” specifically by clarifying that that the PCMA supersedes India’s religious-based Personal Status Laws. One of eight UN human rights treaty bodies, the Committee on the Rights of the Child is the body responsible for ensuring children can enjoy their human rights and live with dignity, respect, and equality.



As detailed in the Center’s new Fact Sheet on Child Marriage and Personal Laws in South Asia, personal status laws are among the greatest barriers to ending child marriage practices in India. Personal laws generally govern matters related to family affairs such as marriage and divorce for specific religious groups—Muslim and Hindi, among others. The laws accommodate the religious and cultural differences in a pluralistic society such as India’s, but are frequently discriminatory against women and can undermine human rights protections. Personal laws establish their own age of marriage, legal status for marriages conducted before the age of 18, and penalties for child marriage.



Although the PCMA states that all marriages of girls younger than 18 are voidable and penalizes involvement in child marriage, under the Hindu Marriage Act this is only an option to a girl who was married before 15 and who contests the marriage before she turns 18. In contrast, under the uncodified Muslim personal laws, a girl can only void a marriage performed before puberty—presumed to be age 15—if the marriage has not been consummated. These inconsistencies exemplify the legal maze faced by girls in these regions, as well as by human rights bodies attempting to enforce international human rights standards.



The UN Committee’s recommendation to India to clarify that the PCMA supersedes personal laws takes an important step towards eradicating this harmful practice that has been too long protected by the cloak of tradition.



“The Committee on the Rights of the Child has taken a bold step by trying to tackle a delicate issue—the problematic relationship between religion-based personal status laws and general secular law,” notes Upreti. “The PCMA could be a stronger law and diligent enforcement is needed to make a national law aimed at prohibiting child marriage work, however, a profound challenge to ending child marriage in India is the precedence and deference given to personal laws on marriage, despite the fact that they are outrightly discriminatory and perpetuate inequality within marriage. The Committee’s recommendations to India send a clear signal that this must end as a matter of human rights.”



In addition to stressing the PCMA’s supremacy over personal status laws, the Committee’s Concluding Observations also responded specifically to a recommendation articulated in the Center and HRLN’s shadow letter for more educational efforts promoting reproductive health and rights. The Committee recommended that India take steps to combat the practices of dowry payment, child marriage, and devadasi (a form of sexual enslavement) by “conducting awareness-raising programmes and campaigns with a view to changing attitudes, as well as counselling and reproductive education, to prevent and combat child marriages, which are harmful to the health and well-being of girls.”


Related Posts

Ending Impunity for Child Marriage in India: Normative and Implementation Gaps

In 2006, India passed the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA) to combat the widespread practice of child marriage. The...

Adolescent SRHR,Asia, India,Engaging Policymakers, Around the World, Reporting on Rights
Ending Impunity for Child Marriage in India: Normative and Implementation Gaps

Ending Impunity for Child Marriage in Nepal

  Despite penal provisions criminalizing child marriage in Nepal, child marriage has been practiced for generations. Globally, Nepal has one...

Adolescent SRHR,Asia, Nepal,Engaging Policymakers, Around the World, Reporting on Rights
Ending Impunity for Child Marriage in Nepal

Shadow Letter on Pakistan to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Adolescent SRHR,Asia, Pakistan,At the United Nations, Engaging Policymakers, Around the World, Reporting on Rights

Sign up for email updates.

The most up-to-date news on reproductive rights, delivered straight to you.

Footer Menu

  • Careers
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us

Center for Reproductive Rights
© (1992-2023)

Use of this site signifies agreement with our disclaimer and privacy policy.

Center for Reproductive Rights
This site uses necessary, analytics and social media cookies to improve your experience and deliver targeted advertising. Click "Options" or click here to learn more and customize your cookie settings, otherwise please click "Accept" to proceed.
OPTIONSACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
CookieDurationDescription
_ga2 yearsThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_UA-6619340-11 minuteNo description
_gid1 dayThis cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.
_parsely_session30 minutesThis cookie is used to track the behavior of a user within the current session.
HotJar: _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjFirstSeen30 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjid1 yearThis cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
HotJar: _hjIncludedInPageviewSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjIncludedInSessionSample2 minutesNo description
HotJar: _hjTLDTestsessionNo description
SSCVER1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for online advertising by creating user profile based on their preferences.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
CookieDurationDescription
_fbp3 monthsThis cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website.
fr3 monthsThe cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.
IDE1 year 24 daysUsed by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
IMRID1 year 24 daysThe domain of this cookie is owned by Nielsen. The cookie is used for storing the start and end of the user session for nielsen statistics. It helps in consumer profiling for online advertising.
personalization_id2 yearsThis cookie is set by twitter.com. It is used integrate the sharing features of this social media. It also stores information about how the user uses the website for tracking and targeting.
TDID1 yearThe cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.
test_cookie15 minutesThis cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
CookieDurationDescription
adEdition1 dayNo description
akaas_MSNBC10 daysNo description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional1 yearThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others1 yearNo description
geoEdition1 dayNo description
next-i18next1 yearNo description
SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by CookieYes Logo
Scroll Up