Last week in the two part series, Looking Deeper into Child Marriage, looked at the often hidden and forgotten plague of child marriage and the some 25,000 child marriages that occur everyday. According to UNICEF some 60 million children are forced to enter into marriages before they are of legal age, half of which are in South Asia. Part 1 looked at the problem of child brides in India, noting that the majority of which take place in Rajasthan, where 15% of girls are under 10 years old when they married. Since the posts were published police in the Indian state of Rajasthan have taken great measures to enforce previous threats to take action against those who are involved in organizing child marriages, including priests and even that of catering firms and photographers. Reports indicated hundreds of child marriages took place in the state and the rare step of arresting 16 local caste leaders for issuing a decree calling for village community members to ostracize a man who refused to allow his 16-year-old daughter to be married, is a huge step in enforcing much needed action against child marriage, which is illegal in India (The Times of India).
While the arrests are only a small dent in the rampant abuse of child marriages and need for enforcement of rule of law in the state it is a great stride in seeing that a true ban is possible.
See part 2 for more in-depth coverage and previous posts on Child Marriage for more information.
