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Disclosing age mandatory in wedding invitation cards RAJAN GAULE | Sindhuli
Despite much effort to curb child marriage in Sindhuli, a district in the central hills, progress has been limited at best. So the local government has now come up with a new idea: It is now compulsory to disclose the ages of the bride and the groom in their wedding invitation cards.
Chairperson of the Marin rural municipality Paniraj Bamjan says, “To stop this illegal activity, it is now compulsory to show in the wedding cards that the groom and the bride are both over the age of 20.”
The local government hopes that people would not lie about their age in the invitation cards. More than two dozen child marriages that were about to take place in the district under parental pressure have been stopped in the past six months.
Chairperson of the Hariharpurgadi rural municipality Karsang Lama says that the aim is to end child marriage in the rural municipality within the next two years.
Golanjor rural municipality has formed a child marriage control committee. Kamalamai municipality has assigned one psychological counselor for seven of its wards in an attempt to stop child marriage (and plans to do the same for the remaining seven wards soon.) Even religious leaders in the district have expressed commitment to help end child marriage. |
Child marriage remains rampant in the north- western district of Jumla despite the presence of dozens of organizations working to end the social scourge. According to the 2011 census, of the 118,000 people in Jumla, 55,442 are children. A whopping 69 percent of the marriages in the district are child marriages. Among the districts in Karnali Province, this percentage is the highest in Rukum (79 percent), followed by Dailekh (70 percent), Salyan (69 percent), Surkhet (68 percent), Jajarkot (65 percent), Kalikot (59 percent), Mugu (57 percent), Humla (52 percent) and Dolpa (49 percent). The provincial office of the National Human Rights Commission revealed these data at a recent program in Jumla. Due to widespread child marriage, 33 percent of girls in Jumla get pregnant before they turn 19. This has not just affected the health and education of these girls but has also threatened their lives.
Local representatives claim their work has been made difficult due to the increasing trend of child marriages in Jumla. “Girls under 20 get married, have kids and want birth certificates for their child,” says Ward Chair Min Bahadur Dangi.
“If we don’t issue a birth certificate, the child would be deprived of government services all their life. But many of the mothers do not have a citizenship card.” District chief of the National Human Rights Commission Ramesh Kumar Thapa says that polygamy and divorce rates have also gone up due to the increasing frequency of child marriages.
Even though child marriages are widespread in the district, complaints are not lodged, says Deputy Superintendent of Police Sita Ram Rijal. Chief District Officer Durga Banjade accuses the local representatives of not being serious about ending child marriages. The provincial government, on the other hand, says it has introduced various programs and policies to end child marriage
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