The Minister of Women, Family and Community Development of Malaysia, Rina Harun, announced that child marriage is not going to be banned in Malaysia a few weeks ago. Following that, the Terengganu State Exco, Mohd Nor Hamzah made a statement that “love is like the ocean” referring to child marriages and revealed that the state is not going to ban child marriage as well. The statement was clearly condoning child marriage though he claimed that the state does not “support” the act. Contradicting, isn’t it? The statement of course created a ruckus among social media users but what’s extremely disappointing is the government’s stance on this matter which really should be a straightforward ban. In 2021, it was reported that 445 students had dropped out of school in 2020 to get married and out of the number, 411 students were female which accounts for 92% approximately. The article on FMT also stated that the states that recorded the highest number of dropout cases were Sarawak (183), Sabah (86), Kelantan (43), Pahang (38), Terengganu (21) and Perak (21). Not just this catalyses the disparity in educational access between genders but also predisposes the girl children to sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy and deleterious psychological implications.
Soon after the statement from the Terengganu Exco, a post by a doctor on his past experience in dealing with a complicated teenage pregnancy became popular. Dr Daya Nandan reminisced his experience of how an 11-year old pregnant girl lost her life due to complications and her newborn could not be saved as well; in Dr Daya’s words, we lost two kids at once. Complications of teenage pregnancy have been repeatedly highlighted by medical professionals and yet our statesmen think that it is a good idea to allow child marriage. Many child marriages involve marrying off girl children to much older men which is also raising concerns about encouraging pedophiles to prey on these young girls in the name of marriage provided it is legal as of now. A lot of child marriages stem due to socio-economic reasons hence the perpetrators can manipulate the financial situation of the children’s families to marry them which is truly a concern.
In many circumstances, the children are forced into marriages when they are still learning to understand their own body, mind and emotions as they go through many transitions during adolescence. Child marriage deprives them of access to education, predisposes them to possible sexual abuse, pushes them into an immature relationship and most importantly snatches away their childhood entirely from them. The government should really be focusing on tackling the root causes that encourage child marriage such as low socio-economic status and lack of awareness instead of allowing premature marriage which is only going to contribute to the root causes more and create a vicious cycle. Ruining a child’s life in the name of marriage just because the kids cannot decide for themselves is possibly the biggest betrayal we can do to them as adults.
Thanusha is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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