A 13-year-old madrasah girl was saved from being getting married in Chhatak upazila on Friday following intervention by her classmates, teachers and rights activists.
Locals said Towhid Ali of Chakalpara village made arrangements to give the hands of his daughter Rani Begum, a Class-VII student of a local madrasa, in marriage to a young man of Kalakaramnaka union Friday.
Meanwhile, Rani’s classmates got to learn about her marriage in the last moment and informed their madrasah principal Zahur Ali and other elderly persons of the locality about it.
As the news spread around, local human rights activists Sumi Rani Das and Borhan Hossain also stepped in to stop the marriage.
Syednagar union parishad chairman Sundar Ali said he sent village defence party members to Rani’s village to halt the marriage.
Asked how the union parishad facilitated the birth registration certificate needed for the marriage, Sundar Ali said he has no idea about it.
According to a 2013 survey jointly conducted by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICCCR,B) and Associates for Community and Population Research (ACPR), about 64 percent of the country’s women aged 20 to 24 had been victims of child marriage.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, child marriage is a global phenomenon and a grave cause of concern.
Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, even though there is a minimum legal age of marriage – 18 for women and 21 for men. –UNB, Sunamganj
