Operation Against Child Marriage!
New Delhi, Dec 22 (EFE).-
Authorities in the northeastern Indian state of Assam have arrested 416 people in an operation against child marriage, authorities said on Sunday.
“Assam continues its fight against child marriage. In (…) operations launched on the night of Dec 21-22, 416 arrests were made and 335 cases registered,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote on X.
The state leader added that the detainees will appear before a court on Sunday and assured that Assam will “continue to take bold steps to end this social evil.”
Nearly a third of women aged 20-24 in Assam were married before reaching legal adulthood, mostly in rural areas, according to the National Family Health Survey 2019-2021 (NFHS5), the latest available.
The figure was only exceeded by four other Indian states in the same period, and is far above the national underage marriage average of 23.3 percent.
The Assam government set out to end this long-standing trend in January 2023, when it decided to toughen laws against men marrying underage girls in an attempt to reduce high infant and maternal mortality rates.
Despite efforts by Indian authorities to reduce child marriage in recent years, which have seen the rate of girls married before the age of 18 drop from 47 percent between 2005 and 2006 to 23.3 percent between 2019 and 2021, the progress is not enough, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The agency highlighted in a report published in 2023 that the countries of South Asia – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan – are home to the highest rate of child marriage in the world.
Nearly 290 million minors were married by their parents in the states of this region. EFE
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