ENDING CHILD MARRIAGE
Commitment description:In Bangladesh, the legal age of marriage for women is 18 years; however, a large proportion of marriages take place before the woman reaches that age. The proportion of women aged 20–24 years who were married before age 18 years declined from 69 percent in 1996 to 59 percent in 2017. Between 2007 and 2017, there has been a very slow increase in the age at first marriage, from a median age of 15.3 years to 16.3 years in 2017. Indeed, it is the lowest in South Asia and one of the lowest in the world. Such low female age at marriage is detrimental to the overall socio-demographic and economic development of the country, including not being able to reap the full benefits of demographic dividend.
Therefore, I am in line with the government commitment to take appropriate measures to increase female age at marriage by, among other things, ensuring full implementation of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, further expansion in educational attainment and creation of adequate number of decent jobs. Such measures will help achieve the government’s targets of reducing the percentages of girls getting married before 18 years to 30%, 20% and 10% respectively by 2020, 2025 and 2030; and Bangladesh becoming completely child marriage free by 2041 as declared by the Honourable Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
Address gender-based violence and the harmful practices of child, early and forced marriages and female genital mutilation(5) (a) Zero sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices, including zero child, early and forced marriage, as well as zero female genital mutilation; and (b) Elimination of all forms of discrimination against all women and girls, in order to realize all individuals’ full socio-economic potential.
