BANNING child marriages and enacting laws to punish offenders will not put an end to the practice unless the government also put in place a long-term plan to educate those culturally-prone to accepting underage matrimony, said the Bar Council today.

“There are people who get their children married off because they have no choices or alternatives,” said Srividhya Ganapathy, a lawyer from the Bar Council Child Rights Committee.

“While yes, we have to ban child marriages, there are families with financial constraints and they see marrying off their children as more viable financially as they are left with no choice.

“These are cultures that should be looked at before such laws are enacted,” Srividhya said at a forum in Kuala Lumpur.

She said that the government would need a comprehensive five-year plan to ensure that the proper support systems are in place to absolutely put an end to child marriages.

“We are still a developing country, so we have to plan together with rural communities, The Home Ministry, and we need the religious authorities to get everybody on board with this plan.”

The plan should also include a tightening of Malaysia’s borders to ensure that the ease with which many couples elope to Thailand will be reduced, said Sividhya.

“Religious authorities should (also) understand that if they promote a more prosperous community, they will do better,” she said.

“If we get that cohesion, we will have viable options to enforce a concrete plan.”

Apart from laws to ban the practice, authorities “should be on the same page” to determine an absolute minimum age to allow marriages, as currently, girls as young as 16 are permitted by law to have sex.

By raising the marriageable age to 18, “the two year gap would also create a lot of issues”, said Sividhya.

The prevalence of child marriages in Malaysia, which although is frowned upon by most communities, is still tolerated, especially among lower-income families.

In Malaysia, the legal minimum age for marriage under civil law for both genders is 18. However, girls can marry at 16 with the permission of their state’s chief minister, while Islamic law sets a 16-year minimum age for girls and allows even earlier marriages with the permission of the sharia court.

In June this year, the case of a 41-year-old man who took an 11-year-old girl for his third wife shocked the nation and sparked outrage from local and international children’s rights groups who have called on the new Pakatan Harapan government to ban marriages for all under 18.

A month later, a 15-year-old girl was reportedly married to a 44-year-old People’s Volunteer Corp member in Kelantan. – October 6, 2018.