Nepal still not doing enough to stop child marriages, says human rights group

Traditional practices, poverty, last year’s massive earthquake and Nepal’s ongoing political instability mean child marriages remain a serious problem in the country, where 10 per cent of the girls marry before they are 15, even though the government says it is making progress to combat the problem, rights groups say.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said government indifference means it has not taken the concrete steps needed to achieve the goal of completely stopping the practice in Nepal, which has the third-highest rate of such marriages in Asia after Bangladesh and India.

Nepalese government officials, however, said the Himalayan nation has made significant progress in stopping child marriage and has new policies and laws to address the issue, including a new law that says both men and women have to be 20 before they can legally marry.

A report released by Human Rights Watch on Thursday said the government has not done enough to end the practice of child marriage, adding there was little evidence of the government working effectively to try to prevent child marriage or mitigate the harm that married children experience.

The report Our Time to Sing and Play said that although child marriage has been illegal in Nepal since 1963, researchers found that “police rarely act to prevent child marriage or bring charges, and almost never do so unless a complaint is filed. Government officials often officially register child marriages, even though child marriage is a crime”.