A bill now before Cabinet proposes to raise the age of marriage for girls to 18 years old. This is because the Children's Act (2012) defines girls under this age as children, for whom marriage and motherhood constitute a violation of rights.
There will be brouhaha about this bill, but it follows a necessary global trend and, while imperfect, is worth supporting.
Some will say that marriage of minors is culturally or religiously sanctioned. Others will argue that the age of marriage and sexual consent should be set at 16 years old, not 18, and that this is necessary to counter the sin and shame of unwed sex and motherhood.
The fact is the laws need to change. The civil marriage act specifies no minimum marriageable age. The Hindu Marriage Act, and Muslim Marriage and Divorce Acts, contain discriminatory provisions which enable marriage of girls at much younger ages than boys, reproducing a patriarchal view that girls do not need as much time for development of their independence and maturity before marriage.
But, there is more at stake. Child marriage is only one example of adult predatory masculinity, which can also be seen in girls' rates of pregnancy, abortion, sexual abuse and incest, and HIV.
There have been small numbers of girls married at 12, 13 and 14 as late as 2015 and in 2010, 17 13-year-old girls were married along with nine 14-year-olds. Between 2011 and today, 21 14-old -girls were married. Overwhelmingly, of the 548 child marriages that took place between 2006 and 2016, the majority of those girls were married to adult men.
These are not relationships between equally adolescent minors. These are examples of relationships in which girls' unequal age, power, and negotiating capacity are normalised. Were the situation to be reversed, where in one year 26 boys under 14 years old were married to mainly adult women, this would be appear to all as a theft of childhood, and molestation.
The symbolic significance of marriage blurs our understanding of child marriage rates as only one indicator of girls' wider sexual vulnerability.
Turn to teenage pregnancy: Between 2008 and 2015, there were 35 pregnancies to girls 12 years old or younger, 2645 to girls between 13 and 16 years old, and 12 551 to girls 17 to 18 years old. "In these statistics," said the AG, "We have recorded the actual live births of thousands of children in circumstances potentially equal to statutory rape."
In terms of sexual offence charges, between 2000 and 2015, there were 2 258 matters in relation to girls compared to two charges for sex with males under 16 years old. As of July 2015, there were 559 cases related to sexual intercourse with a female under the age 14 years, 128 related to sexual intercourse with a person over 14 years and under 16 years without consent, and 45 related to sexual intercourse with a dependent minor. It is well documented that girls' sexual vulnerability to adult men vastly increases between 10 and 14 years old, the very age around which child marriage debate pivots.
With regard to abortions recorded by public hospitals, between 2011 and 2015, there were 67 among girls 13 to 16 years old and 683 among those 17 to 19 years old. Finally, the HIV statistics are telling as girls 15-24 years old have almost always had higher rates than boys of their age. In 2014, girls accounted for 60 per cent of infections among 15 to 19 year olds.
We need further research on these numbers and their meanings as well as on the prevalence and implications of adult men's informal unions with girl children. Nonetheless, the overall trends are clear.
In a context where there is no national sexual and reproductive health policy, and no comprehensive sexual education in schools, girl children are overwhelmingly being targeted by men and boys older than them, in ways that impact their empowerment, self-determination, reproductive health, and right to live free from harm.
We must ask which is more important: protection of patriarchal ideologies, symbolic ethnic and religious laws, respectability politics and predatory masculinities or, instead, public will that presses political will to provide protections that girls urgently need.