CHILD MARRIAGE IN SOUTH ASIA
Child Marriage:
Causes, Consequences in South Asia and How Positive Progress is Made in Nepal
Abstract
South Asia is the most prevalent regional for child marriage globally. Defining as at least
one of the spouse is under 18 years old, child marriage devastates human rights, especially of
women and children. This research paper is based on the previous studies and reports from
national governments and United Nations. Poor, less or no educated girls who live in the rural
area are most likely to marry as adolescence. The serious negative outcomes such as health and
domestic violence concerns draw attention of national governments and international
communities. Nations in South Asia legislate the minimum age of marriage and issued order to
decrease early marriage. Meanwhile, the United Nations and NGOs take actions and provide aids
to protect girls from early marriage. In recent years, Nepal has made significant positive progress
in terms of reducing child marriage. The case of Nepal provides us an example to deal with such
problems in other South Asian countries.
Key words: child marriage; human rights; South Asia; education; gender discrimination;
domestic violence.
Introduction
Child marriage is a serious human rights violation, which have already affected over 700 million
females alive today globally (Masur 2014). It has been predicted that more than 150 million girls
globally would be affected in the next decade if the current trend does not change (ICRW 2012).
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CHILD MARRIAGE IN SOUTH ASIA
Africa and South Asia have been two hard-hit areas where more than half of the girls in those
areas involved in this issue (UNIEF 2009).
As a traditional culture of South Asia, child marriage in South Asia passes from generation to
generation. Meanwhile, it is also a kind of violence which seriously undermines the girls’ health,
rights of education and freedom. Several causes have been generally recognized by the
international community, which are poverty, social norms such as gender discrimination and
male-dominant society, lack of educational opportunities and weak support of laws (multiple
sources). (need more supporting details of the causes of child marriage)
The negative consequences are obvious. Firstly, the health related outcomes are need to be
concerned. Once the young girls married, they have to be well-prepared to be a mother since they
hardly have access to get the information about birth-control. However, adolescent mothers who
are aged 15 to 19 risk as twice likely to maternal death as females between 20 and 24 (UNIEF
2009), while girls who are under 15 years old are as five times likely to die when giving birth
than women older than 20 years old (7). Second, girls’ education is limited by early marriage.
Girls usually dropout from school as soon as they get married since they need to shoulder the
responsibility of take care of the whole family and give birth to babies. In fact, education and
early marriage influence each other. According to the “Nepal Adolescents and Youth Survey”
(2012), marriage had been the top reason for teenage girls between 15 and 19 dropouts from
school. Whereas, the other article, which is named “Change and continuity in social norms and
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practices around marriage and education in Nepal,” shows that higher education enrolment has a
positive correlation with the growing age of marriage. Thus, promoting education in Nepal can
be an effective way to solve the problem of child marriage.
Third, the adolescent wives have no access to fight with domestic violence and abuse, which
would lead to poor mental health. (more detail needed)
Methodology
The findings and discussions of this research paper are mainly based on secondary sources and
country reports that contain various primary sources such as the interviews of girls in Nepal, as
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