Context:- Indian society’s preoccupation with marriage has gripped its government of late. On Independence Day, Prime Minister announced that his government was contemplating raising the minimum age of marriage for girls from 18 to 21 years. Currently, it is 18 for girls and 21 for boys. In order to circumvent the issue of malnutrition among girls, the government has hit upon the solution of raising their age of marriage.
In the 2020 Budget speech the Finance minister said that a task force would be set up to look into the age at which a girl entered motherhood in order to address issues of maternal mortality and nutrition levels. On June 4, the Women and Child Development Ministry constituted a task force under the chairpersonship of Jaya Jaitly.
Child marriage as a menace must be tackled. But it has, at best, a circuitous connection with malnutrition. The primary causes of child marriage in India, experts agree, are illiteracy, ignorance and poverty, coupled with patriarchy, lack of opportunities in education and employment, lack of agency, fear of sexual assault, blind beliefs, the family’s need to save or retain property, issues of marriage-related expenditure and the haste to fulfill a parental responsibility. Besides, data show that while child marriages still take place, they are in gradual decline.
In 2000, 9.5 per cent of boys and 35.7 per cent of girls aged between 15 and 19 were married, according to the United Nations Population Division. In 2001, 300,000 girls under the age of 15 had given birth, some for the second time, according to the Census.
In 2005-06, 45 per cent of girls married before the age of 18 years, according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS III). In 2009, the corresponding figure rose to 47 per cent. Fifty-six per cent of these girls were in rural areas, according to UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children 2009” report, which also stated that 52 per cent of girls had their first pregnancy between 15 and 19 years.
More recent data point to a decline in the trend. According to NFHS-4, 2015-16, there has been a decline in child marriage in the last decade to 27 per cent for women, and 20 per cent for men, and an increase in the median age of marriage from 17.2 years to 19 years for women, and from 22.6 to 24.5 years for men.
Given a gradual but sustained increase in age at marriage, the National Coalition Advocating for Adolescent Concerns (NCAAC) questioned the need for increasing the legal age at marriage for girls or declaring underage marriages void. Child marriage was more a consequence of girls dropping out of school rather than the cause, they said.
Using the same data, a list of 42 individuals from organisations such as the Nirantar Trust, Oxfam, the HAQ Centre for Child Rights, Action Aid and Save the Children and Shantha Sinha, former Chairperson of the NCPCR, explained how child marriage had already given way to adolescent marriage in India. They urged the task force to not take the legal route to raise the age of marriage for women and, instead, take measures to strengthen the positive changes that are already under way.
They said: “Child marriage is no longer a significant phenomenon in India—what we now see is late adolescent marriage, and even here the age at marriage has been improving. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, on the ground information has led us to expect further improvements. Should the legal age of marriage be raised to 21 years, no less than 56 per cent of the women (in the 20-24 year age group of NFHS-4) who married below this age—and their families—would be turned into criminals overnight. Moreover, this proportion is as high as 75 per cent amongst the poorest 20 per cent of the population.
Even in a progressive state like Kerala (with excellent health coverage and high levels of education) one third of all women in the 20-24 age group marry below 21 years. Note further that these estimates suffer from what is called the truncation effect: Many women in the age group 18-20 years at the time of the survey and who were unmarried would be marrying before the age of 21 years. In other words, the vast majority of Indian women across the country marry before 21, and would now become criminalisable.”
The Saheli Women’s Resource Centre believes that the government’s push behind delaying the age of marriage for girls might in part stem from the agenda of population control. In a submission to the task force, the centre said: “The push for increasing the age of marriage of women is nothing more than population control by another name. And let us not fool ourselves, the push to control birth rates and population will have a direct impact on Child Sex Ratios, increasing sex selective abortions once again; in the bargain, undoing years of campaign and struggle to get the PC-PNDT Act [Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994] in place, and to get it amended –an Act that is in any case under threat with the latest notification of the central government suspending several of its provisions under the guise of the lockdown.” On April 4, the Department of Health and Family Welfare temporarily suspended some rules under the Act. Sabu George, who petitioned the Supreme Court against the notification, felt it might lead to “rampant sex determination tests”.,.
The Health Ministry feels that raising the age of marriage for girls will give girls more time to complete their education. It will “prepare them physiologically and psychologically to shoulder the responsibility of marriage and children”, the ministry said in its submission to the task force. It added that this had the potential to positively impact the health of the girl’s progeny. It would also empower girls to take informed autonomous decisions regarding their fertility preferences and care during ante-natal, childbirth and post-natal period, felt the ministry.
“This will lead to better chances of joining workforce. Increasing the legal age of marriage will thus give women independence, greater freedom of marital choices and given the positive correlation between educational qualification and lower fertility rates, more reproductive freedom. Further, the access to education resulting from both maternal and child health and a collateral dividend for socio economic upliftment of women at large,” said the ministry.
Views of young people
On July 17, Jaya Jaitly consulted adolescent and youth groups to get their perspectives on the issue. Their views reflect the complexity of the issue at hand. While there is no categorical acceptance or rejection of the proposed change, there is a clear view against any fixation with the age of marriage for girls as a means of empowerment.
Himadri Priya Duwara, 16, from Assam, indicated that increasing the age of marriage would not make a difference until structural inequalities were addressed. She explained that the centrality of marriage was very strong in a girl’s life. She further said that while education for girls from low-income backgrounds was free in Assam until class XII, government schools were not in good condition, This compelled parents to send them to unaffordable private schools and ultimately resulted in girls dropping out. She recommended that incentives should be provided to cover expenses such as books and uniforms. Awareness generation among parents and girls through women’s collectives such as Mahila Samitis and Kishori Samitis would be an important move. Livelihood opportunities through short courses and training in stitching and so on would allow girls to become independent and consequently delay their marriage.
Poorva Prabha Patil, 21, from Maharashtra, the first woman president of the Medical Students Association of India, said that increasing the age of marriage for girls to 21 years would only give rise to further challenges. She said the move would lead to more home deliveries because people would be apprehensive about reporting pregnancies. It would increase cases of criminalisation and harassment, especially for couples who wished to marry partners of their choice. She further flagged the issue of age of sexual consent and the need for sensitisation of society and health workers to the sexual needs of young girls.
Anjali Suryavanshi, 19, from Gujarat and a youth volunteer with Sahaj, said that increasing the age of marriage to 21 years would enable girls to complete their higher education and make it more likely for girls to be employed and financially independent and consequently able to make informed decisions. She, however, emphasised the importance of free and consensual marriage. She explained that among the factors contributing to child marriage was the fear of parents that adolescent daughters might get into sexual relationships. Other factors were poverty and lack of resources to invest in the education of daughters. She said there was a need to address these issues.
Venkata Nandini, 18, from Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, is a youth volunteer for the People’s Organization for Rural Development. She said that increasing the age of marriage might help girls to complete their education, get job opportunities and be physically and mentally healthier. She said that these factors could provide cushion support in times of unforeseen situations like divorces. She emphasised that legal reforms might not be sufficient and said that structural support in terms of schools and colleges and assured access to them was important. Further, parents and children should be counselled on the importance of girls’ education, skill training, health and employment opportunities. She emphasised the need to strengthen the Child Marriage Prohibition Officer’s post for better implementation of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA).
Beauty Kumari Paswan, 20, from Bihar felt that as the Constitution provided equal rights to girls and boys, the principle of equality should be extended to marriage as well. She felt that increasing the age of marriage would enable girls to finish their education, get exposed to new ideas, have occupational aspirations, and ultimately push back child-bearing age. However, she expressed concern about the possibility of couples who are in consensual relationships being exposed to harassment by the police following this reform. She also emphasised the importance of making accessible sexual and reproductive health knowledge and services among young girls. Youth medical centres have opened, but these services are not extended to unmarried couples because of biases among nurses stationed there. There is a need for massive awareness campaigns against child marriage and on sexual and reproductive health among adolescents, similar to the awareness drives on family planning. Thus, increasing the age of marriage would not be relevant if it is not supplemented by these efforts, she said.
There are fears of misuse of the PCMA. Analysing 83 High Court and District Court judgments and orders from 2008-2017, in which the PCMA was either invoked or discussed, Partners for Law in Development (PLD) tried to determine who used the law the most and why. The finding was that the parties involved in such litigation were predominantly drawn from poor, peri-rural and working-class backgrounds with little or no means to secure quality education, white-collar jobs, or professional careers.
The PLD found that an unintended effect of the law was to reinforce parental control over daughters’ lives and marriage choices and punish independently chosen husbands rather than prosecute arranged customary marriages. “Any deliberation on amending the PCMA must be informed by the data on how the law is used, and its impact on young people whose interests the law seeks to protect. This data indicates that law is predominantly used to retaliate against elopements or self-arranged marriages, which incarcerates boys and forces girls into shelter homes, even in cases that end in acquittal. Any law reform undertaken in relation to the PCMA must seek to strengthen the life chances of girls most vulnerable to early marriage, through linkages with government schemes that offer educational and vocational opportunities; and in the event of marriage, must invest girls with support services and decision making in relation to opting in or repudiating the marriage,” the PLD said.
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.