Tanzina Fardoush
Managing Editor – The Oniket Bulletin
Bangladesh’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017 was designed to modernise a colonial era statute and curb one of the highest child marriage rates on earth. Instead, its controversial Section 19 special provision has become the focal point of sustained domestic and international criticism, raising questions about whether the reform moved the country forward or backward. This article reviews the Act, examining both its prospects and its limitations, in order to initiate a discussion on the legal and social transformation the Act requires.
Reform Overview and the Section 19 Problem
The Act replaced the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 and set the minimum marriageable age at 18 for females and 21 for males, criminalising the contracting, solemnising, and facilitating of underage unions. However, Section 19 introduced a special provision allowing marriage below 18 with parental consent and judicial authorisation when deemed to be in the best interest of the minor.
The 2018 Child Marriage Restraint Rules subsequently interpreted special circumstances narrowly, citing teenage pregnancies from romantic relationships where no close relatives are available to care for the pregnant girl. Critics argue this framework effectively legalises what the statute was enacted to prohibit and is absent from the prior law it replaced.
Current Status: Persistent Crisis
Nearly a decade after the 2014 Girl Summit pledge to end marriage of girls under 15 by 2021, Bangladesh still has the highest child marriage prevalence in Asia and the eighth highest in the world. As of 2025, 51.4 percent of women aged 20 to 24 had been married before turning 18. The country is home to 38 million child brides, of whom 13 million were married before age 15, and the pandemic pushed child marriage rates up by roughly 13 percent. UNICEF estimates that Bangladesh must cut child marriage seventeen times faster than it has over the past decade to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of eradicating the practice by 2030. The law’s deterrent power is weakened further by its maximum penalty, about one and a half months’ imprisonment and a fine equivalent to roughly thirteen US dollars, which makes punitive enforcement largely symbolic.
Enforcement Gaps and Legislative Ambiguities
Beyond Section 19, the legal regime suffers from multiple structural weaknesses. Legal inconsistency persists between statutory marriage ages and personal laws governing marriage by religion, creating confusion about which standard prevails. The Act provides no option for annulment, forcing child marriage victims into cumbersome dissolution procedures with discriminatory stipulations.
The Rules fail to specify a minimum age for marriage under the special provision, provide no mechanism to determine the free and full consent of the minor, and offer no comprehensive criteria or investigation guidelines for assessing the best interest of the child. Enforcement barriers compound these legislative flaws: limited awareness of the law among communities, poor functioning of Child Marriage Prevention Committees, weak implementation of birth and marriage registration systems, limited prosecution of offenders, and an absence of protection and support systems for victims. The Act also penalises minors involved in their own marriages and does not criminalise marital rape for girls above the age of 13, reflecting the colonial Penal Code of 1860.
Essential Governance Attention
The governance apparatus must now confront four imperatives. First, Parliament should amend Section 19 to specify a minimum age below which no exception is permissible, define special circumstances exhaustively, and require written confirmation from the Supreme Court before any lower court authorisation under the provision becomes operative. Second, the discriminatory marriageable age gap between males and females should be equalised. Third, child marriages must be rendered voidable at the option of the minor, with an independent fund established for rescue, rehabilitation, legal aid, medical treatment, and psychosocial counselling. Fourth, the colonial provision permitting marital rape of minor girls aged 13 and above must be repealed.
Judicial Imperatives
The judiciary bears equally urgent responsibilities. Courts must develop rigorous protocols for determining the free and informed consent of minors in any special provision hearing, ensuring that girls are interviewed independently of parents and prospective spouses.
Jurisdictional ambiguities across courts must be resolved through authoritative interpretive guidance. Judicial training programmes should prioritise capacity building on international standards, including the obligation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and CEDAW that all child marriages constitute forced marriages. Where personal laws conflict with statutory minimums, the Supreme Court should provide binding clarification that the CMRA prevails.
Future Trajectory
Bangladesh’s National Adolescent Health Strategy 2017 to 2030 and the Social Protection Plus programme represent meaningful policy architecture, yet strategy without legislative coherence yields limited outcomes. The country’s relative strength in gender indicators compared with regional peers provides a favourable foundation for progress, but only if the legal framework stops contradicting itself.
The special provision, as currently drafted, signals institutional tolerance of child marriage rather than its eradication. Until Section 19 is either repealed or subjected to rigorous judicial and legislative safeguards that place the rights of the child above patriarchal convenience, Bangladesh’s legal reform will continue to swing in the wrong direction, and 38 million child brides will remain a statistical indictment rather than a historical memory.
