Kali­fa Clyne

More than 8,400 girls and 1,300 boys un­der 19 years of age were mar­ried in T&T be­tween 1997-2007.These fig­ures in­clude girls un­der the age of 15.These were the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) fig­ures pre­sent­ed by Rawwi­da Baksh, con­sul­tant at the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment at the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on the Stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the Le­gal Age of Mar­riage yes­ter­day at Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain."Re­search needs to be done in or­der to find out the dy­nam­ics tak­ing place in these cir­cum­stances. We need to know how these young girls feel with their lives be­ing mort­gaged," said Baksh.She re­vealed that T&T is one of 50 coun­tries in the world where child mar­riages still take place."In 2011, on the eve of our 50th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, it is anom­alous that we would still have leg­is­la­tion that per­pet­u­ates the un­equal treat­ment of girls," said Baksh.Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, who said leg­is­la­tion treat­ing with the is­sue of child pro­tec­tion would go to Par­lia­ment very soon, ad­mit­ted that T&T lags be­hind in the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of an age for mar­riage.

Ac­cord­ing to com­mon law in the Mar­riage Act of 1923, the le­gal age for mar­riage stands at 12 for girls and 14 for boys."There is a say­ing on the street that 'af­ter 12 is lunch' mean­ing once a girl is over the age of 12 she can be eat­en raw sex­u­al­ly," said St Rose-Greaves, who re­vealed that child mar­riages were of­ten used as a method to avoid pros­e­cu­tion for sex­u­al vi­o­la­tions against mi­nors, or to take the shame away from teenage preg­nan­cies.She said for some fam­i­lies young girls are mar­ried off for eco­nom­ic rea­sons. St Rose-Greaves said the coun­try's four mar­riage acts are in con­flict with con­ven­tions to which T&T is a sig­na­to­ry, in­clud­ing the Con­ven­tion for the Rights of the Child and the Con­ven­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of all forms of Dis­crim­i­na­tion Against Women.Al­though the Acts stip­u­late ages of con­sent, they do not give an age for mar­riage.The min­is­ter said con­sul­ta­tion is need­ed among all in­ter­est groups to en­sure pro­tec­tion of all the coun­try's chil­dren.

St Rose-Greaves had an­nounced her in­ten­tion in Par­lia­ment last week to hold con­sul­ta­tions on the re­view­ing of laws re­lat­ing to child mar­riages.Fol­low­ing this Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat Ma­haraj de­fend­ed the prac­tice.In a news­pa­per re­port Ma­haraj crit­i­cised St Rose-Greaves for her an­nounce­ment.He said: "That de­ci­sion first of all is def­i­nite­ly for a com­mu­ni­ty to de­cide. Very few peo­ple un­der 14 years get mar­ried in T&T."Sat said how­ev­er that the mi­nor­i­ty ages were there as a safe­ty net.The four Acts deal­ing with mar­riage in T&T are:The Mar­riage Act which gov­erns civ­il and Chris­t­ian mar­riages and sets the age of con­sent at 18 for males and fe­males.n The Mar­riage and Di­vorce Act which gov­erns Mus­lim mar­riages and di­vorces and sets the age of con­sent at 16 for males and 12 for fe­males­The Hin­du Mar­riage Act which sets the age of con­sent at 18 for males and 14 for fe­males. How­ev­er, pro­vi­sions are made for per­sons un­der these set ages to be con­tract­ed in mar­riage with con­sent.The Or­isha Mar­riage Act which sets the age of con­sent at 18 for males and 16 for fe­males.