Not Our Girls

When the laws fail our youth by allowing child marriage to occur, it ’s time to get serious about change.

- Meghan Angelica Paul

Every year, more than 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 worldwide. According to UNICEF, if the current rate holds, 14.2 million girls annually will be married too young. While child marriage is prevalent the world over, and has a dark history here in Malaysia, the issue was sparked once again when news broke that a middle-aged man married an 11-year-old child. On June 30 2018, Star Online reported of such a union when 41-year-old Che Abdul Karim Che Abdul Hamid took 11-year-old Ayu as his third wife in Golok, Thailand.

Within hours, there was a deluge of reporting and outrage on social media platforms and online news sites regarding the news of the married couple. The idea of a man marrying a child is enough to send everyone into a rage. There are developments, policies, protection of the rights of children (just last year in March 2017, the Malaysian Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Against Children Bill 2017). But it ’s a practice still happening in our country, and pedophiles are taking advantage of legal loopholes. We investigate the dark truths of child marriage.

THE HARROWING REALITY

Many factors contribute to child marriage, such as poverty, lack of education, and cultural practices. Child marriage is the formal (or informal) marriage of a child under the age of 18 (regardless of gender). In the past, many communities where child marriage is practised, girls were not “valued” as much as boys were, so little girls were seen as burdens to their families. The solution was to marry off daughters as early as possible to ease economic hardship — by “transferring” the burden of their daughter to her husband’s family.