LAW & SOCIETY

LSC0164
SEMESTER 3, 21/22
ASSIGNMENT 1

NAME : NUR ALIFA SYAFFIA BINTI MOHAMMAD SUHLY

“My best friend is my stepmother now”. Norazila Che Abdul Karim said these words with a

heavy heart. Ayu, an 11 years old girl, Norazila’s best friend, got married to Che Abdul Karim

who is Norazila’s father. This is what we call a child mariage. Child marriage is not only

happening in Malaysia but it is spreading widely around the world. Many kids, especially girls,

are experiencing such terrible things. Child marriage is not a new norm in our world. It has been

practiced for years. Under the International Law, child marriage is considered as a crime as it

robbed human rights of the children. However, this criticized doing still has not been stopped

anywhere. What exactly is child marriage? How can such a thing happen in this world?

Point 1

First and foremost, we need to know deeply what exactly is child marriage. According to

United Nations Human Rights, a child marriage can be defined as any marriage which atleast one

of the parties is under 18 years old. According to UNICEF, approximately more than 60 million

girls got married before they turned 18 in 2007 but the number is increasing throughout the

years. After 15 years, there are 650 million girls who got married as children around the world.

In this world, the girls who are involved in child marriage are higher than boys. In Africa and

South Asia countries, the child marriage cases are highest in rate. In Sub-Saharan Africa

countries, about 37% of girls got married when they were children. Niger holds the highest rate

of child marriage which is 76% of girls who got married before their legal birthday. In Malaysia,

child marriage mainly occured in Sabah with about 334 children got married in 2018. About

1500 children get married every year in Malaysia as of 2018. In most countries, child marriage is

prohibited as it is considered as harming the human rights of the children. For example, countries
like Norway and Philipines already banned child marriage. Norway has been banning child

marriage since 2018 and Philipines just joined the motion in early 2022. However, Malaysia has

no plan in order to ban child marriage. The Minister of Women, Family and Community

Development, Datuk Seri Rina Binti Mohd Harun said that Malaysia is not going to ban the child

marriage anytime soon. However, according to Datuk Seri Rina Binti Mohd Harun, Malaysia has

a plan to curb child marriage by implementing a National Strategic Plan in Handling the Causes

of Child Marriages.

Point 2

Everything in this world will happen with a reason. Child marriage has been happening around

the world due to a few reasons and causes. The first reason child marriage occured because of

family problem which is poverty. Poverty means a state of someone that is in need financially to

support their living. Poverty can be considered as the common reason of child marriage. For

families with financial problems, they would think that marrying their girl is the solution for their

economic crisis. The reason they thought to do so is because there will be one less person to feed

and to take care of. Furthermore, when their girl gets married, they will be paid some amount of

dowry. In this way, they can use the dowry to help them with their financial problems. The

parents will also think that their girl will be in a safer and much more comfortable place after

getting married. Some families also prioritize their son’s education rather than daughter’s

because they think that investing in the son’s education is more useful. This is due to the

normalisation that women will be more likely to become housewives. In certain countries, child

marriage is some sort of a family tradition for some circle of community. For instance, there is a

tribe called Rabari who lives in the Kutch region in western state of Gujarat. Other than that,
child marriage also occurred due to lack of knowledge about the bad consequences of child

marriage. Referring to the statistics above, it can be seen that majority of child marriage cases

happened in rural areas. It can be concluded that the knowledge about child marriage was not

received by the people from rural areas. The people in rural areas are not evolving at the same

speed as the technologies. From their religion perspective, child marriage is being practised

because they want to protect their children from involving in immoral activities among teenagers

such as adultery, gambling, taking drugs and smoking. Rather than taking them to school to

provide them with education, they would just force their children to get married. It cannot be

denied that all parents would feel worried if their children were involved in such immoral

behaviour but forcing them to get married is not the greatest solution as it will impact the

children’s future.

Point 3

Moving on to the effects of child marriage. The first effect of child marriage is in terms of

medically. This awful practice can affect the children’s growth. It can affect children’s growth

because child marriage can lead to stunted cognitive growth of the children. Referring to a

psychologist, Associate Professor Dr Mohd Awang Idris of Universiti Malaya, he said that

children’s growth is effected by their surroundings. However, if they get married at such a young

age, their growth will be at risk. Other than affecting their growth, child marriage can also be

harmful to their mental and physical. After getting married at such an early and young age, the

brides will surely get pregnant at such a young age. Forced and early pregnancy can be such a

dangerous harm to the children’s body and health. According to the Ministry of Health of

Malaysia, young or teenage pregnancy can result in difficulty during labour, having high blood
pressure and even affecting the mother’s mental health. Pregnant mother needs full care during

pregnancy. According to the World Health Organization, teenage pregnancy can lead to health

problems in the long-term to both mother and the children. Besides giving harmful effect to the

children’s health, child marriage also gives impact on the children’s education. When one gets

married at such a young age, they will be more likely to drop out from school and just focus on

growing their family. Extracted from The Star Newspaper, the Youth and Sports Ministry stated

that 445 Malaysia’s youths dropped out from school just to get married in 2020 until 2021. If the

students dropped out from school, their future is not in a good sight. This will clearly affect them

and they will probably have a dark future ahead. This is worrying as the youths are the nation’s

hope.

Point 4

The next discussion is about the way to prevent or maybe to curb the child marriage. The first

way is by providing complete education for children from the rural areas. As stated above, the

practise of child marriage commonly came from the rural areas. The government needs to ensure

that the education for each of the children is provided to make them comfortable and get the

opportunity to have a bright future for themselves and their families. On top of that, the authority

needs to educate the parents of the children about the impacts of child marriage to their children

to prevent them from destroying their children’s future. If the government only provide education

opportunity to the children, the parents will not be aware of the impacts of child marriage. The

parents needed a clear image of the harmfulness of child marriage. One of the biggest problem

that contribute to child marriage is poverty. To put a top to child marriage due to poverty, the

government needs to guarantee that the people’s needs are fulfilled, thus they will not have live
in a better life. This way, they will not have to worry about their financial status to the extent that

they need to get their daughter married. Poverty has been a problem since a long time ago, yet

the government has not come up with the greatest idea to curb this problem. On another note, the

government also need to come up with a restriction or law to ban child marriage in every country

strictly. It is a sad reality that most of the countries in this world have not ban child marriage.

Analysis (Pros)

However, it cannot be denied that child marriage also contribute a few advantages. One of the

advantages is child marriage contributed to the population growth. It means that the brides will

usually start getting pregnant at such a young age and continue to get pregnant from time to time.

By increasing the population growth, there will be more preservation for the country as we know

that the youths are the nation’s hope to continue to evolve the nation in a good way.

Conclusion

Taking everything into account, it can be seen clearly that child marriage is a serious matter

that should be taken seriously and strictly. Child marriage will only bring harm to the victims. A

marriage should have a union connection between the groom and the bride. Making a young girl

as a bride will only result in a dark future. The authorities along with the society should work as

a team to curb the problem of child marriage. The children hold the nation’s future. The nation

needs reliable children to lead the nation in order to bring a positive change to the country.
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