Child marriage

Child marriage threatens the lives, well-being and futures of girls around the world.

Child is a person who has not completed twenty-one years of age, if a male, and if a female, has not completed eighteen years of age.[1]

Marriage is the legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a personal relationship (historically and in some jurisdictions specifically a union between a man and a woman).[2]

Child Marriage is defined as a marriage of a girl or boy before the age of 18 and refers to both formal marriages and informal unions in which children under the age of 18 live with a partner as if married. Child marriage affects both girls and boys, but it affects girls disproportionately, especially in South Asia.[3]

Validity of Child Marriage

A marriage in which either the girl is below 18 years of age, or the boy is below 21 years of age is child marriage. The previous law titled Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 had provisions only for restraining the solemnization, and not for prevention or prohibition of child marriages. The present law- Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 has three purposes i.e., prevention of child marriages, protection of children involved and prosecution of offenders. This law has declared child marriage to be a cognizable and a non-bailable offence. An injunction can be issued by the court to prohibit its solemnization and if a marriage is solemnized after the injunction, then such a marriage is to be declared as null and void.[4]

Consequences of child marriage

Child marriage is an extremely hazardous practice with devastating consequences. Child brides are certainly more vulnerable to domestic violence from their older husbands. Young brides are far more likely to be uneducated than girls who do not marry.[5]

These girls have a greater risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and are more likely to bear children before they are physically ready. Approximately 70,000 young brides die every year as a result of childbirth complications. Girls who give birth before the age of 15 years are five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in their twenties. Early marriage and pregnancy can also be detrimental to the girl�s child. If a mother is under the age of 18 years, then her baby�s chance of dying within the first year of its like is 60% greater than infants born to a mother older than the age of 19 years.[6]

WHY DOES CHILD MARRIAGE HAPPEN?

Child marriage is basically rooted in gender inequality and the belief that girls and women are somehow inferior to boys and men. It is a complex issue. Poverty, lack of education, cultural practices, and insecurity fuel and sustain the practice. But drivers will vary from one community to the next and the practice may look different across regions and countries, even within the same country.[7]

Objective

To understand the concept of child marriage, it�s validity, judicial pronouncements on the concept, & suggestions for betterment of the situations prevalent.

Methodology

This project is done on the basis of doctrinal method. Secondary data is one type of quantitative data that has already been collected by someone else for different purpose to our topic in discussion. It is always convenient to use data collected by someone else if exists it may be on a much larger scale than we could hope to collect and could contribute to our feelings considerably. Secondary sources are of the types:

Paper based sources books, journals, periodicals, abstracts, indexes, directions, research reports, conference papers, market reports, annual reports, internal records of organizations, newspapers and magazines.

 

Electronic sources: CD-ROMS, online databases, inte rnet, videos, broadcast