Nepal has a long history of efforts to curb child marriage. From making the practice illegal in 1963 to endorsing a national strategy to end it by 2030 as a part of Sustainable Development Goals, the country has taken several positive steps. The Civil Code 2017 has set 20 as the minimum marriage age for women and men. In this connection, many national and international organisations are joining hands with the government to reach rural areas. After the federal setup came into effect, local governments have been more active in trying to root out underage marriage. But these efforts have unfortunately fallen short, and young girls are still being married off too soon.

This problem is rampant, especially in rural areas, and among Nepal’s poor and marginalised communities. Take for instance the Sinja area in the remote district of Karnali province, Jumla. In the past three years, 755 of the 1,107 people who married in Hima Rural Municipality were underage. Similarly, in Sinja Rural Municipality, 184 of the 301 people who married were too young to tie the knot. In Kanakasundari Rural Municipality, when 1,533 people married in the last three years, 571 were of the ineligible age. But these numbers could be higher because many cases go unreported, and child marriages are performed in a hush-hush manner.

Further, the trend of child love marriages in which underage couples marry by choice has also been increasing—one of the many reasons the country has the third-highest rate of early marriage in Asia and the second-highest in South Asia. According to a 2014 survey by an organisation working to end child marriage, Girls Not Brides Nepal, young couples initiated one-third of such marriages. Data from Hima, Sinja and Kanakasundari Rural Municipalities also suggest a rise in teenage marriage. The trend is now increasing in many parts of the country with young people’s exposure to social media, challenging the decades-long efforts to curb them.

This is a terrible sign. Early marriage not only puts the lives of young girls at risk, but also makes them vulnerable to maternal death, complications in pregnancy, other health issues, dropping out of school and domestic violence. In 2022 alone, according to a report by the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), 5,743 women, including 1,444 girls, were the victims of violence.

In order to prevent young girls and boys and also the parents from opting for child marriage, there is a need to ramp up awareness about the potential risks. As the patriarchal mindset of seeing daughters as a burden is deep-rooted, this problem will be challenging to tackle. This is why we also need sensitisation programmes to make parents realise that their daughters are valuable beings and that marrying them off early hampers their future potential and life.

The rural municipalities in the Sinja area are campaigning against the practice. With the help of organisations working on child rights, the officials have been publishing an annual study on child marriage since 2020. This is a laudable step and worth emulating for other communities. These kinds of local level efforts, when coupled with more money and manpower from the federal level, can make a decisive difference. Thousands of precious lives and livelihoods will be saved in the process.