Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Be­tween 1996 and 2016, the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al record­ed 3,478 child mar­riages, with al­most 98 per cent be­ing fe­males.

Fur­ther, mar­riage cer­tifi­cates showed that some of them were girls as young as 11 and 12 who were mar­ried to men as old as 36, 42 and 56.

These sta­tis­tics were dis­closed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as he pi­lot­ed the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions Mar­riage Bill 2016.

The bill seeks to raise the age of mar­riage to 18, as rec­om­mend­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions, Al-Rawi said.

It seeks to har­monise mar­riage con­tracts across the board, and be in keep­ing with the Chil­dren's Act of 2012 which for­bids mar­riage un­der the age of 18.

The AG re­ferred to the Hin­du, Mus­lim and Or­isha mar­riage acts which al­low mar­riages from the ages of 14, 12 and 16 re­spec­tive­ly in the case of girls.

It seeks to amend the Hin­du Mar­riage Act of 1945, the Mus­lim Mar­riage and Di­vorce Act of 1961 and the Or­isha Mar­riage Act of 1999.

Al-Rawi said T&T is one of on­ly eight coun­tries in the world where some­one can be mar­ried as ear­ly as age 12.

The Bill pro­pos­es to crim­i­nalise the mar­riage of peo­ple un­der 18 by a mar­riage of­fi­cer, who would be fined $50,000 and jailed for sev­en years for the of­fence.

Seek­ing to dis­pel the ar­gu­ment by re­li­gious bod­ies that ear­ly mar­riages pro­tect young girls from sex­u­al im­moral­i­ty and un­want­ed preg­nan­cy, al Rawi said sta­tis­tics al­so showed there were more child preg­nan­cies than abor­tions.

Be­tween 1999 and 2015, hos­pi­tal records showed 15,231 chil­dren gave birth.

The sta­tis­tics al­so showed there were 743 teenage abor­tions be­tween 2011 to 2015.

In 2016 alone, 168 chil­dren be­tween 11 and 16 be­came preg­nant while 12 had abor­tions, the AG said.

He said the bill comes af­ter 26 years of pub­lic dis­cus­sion and sev­en months of Gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tions on the mat­ter and he had re­ceived nu­mer­ous sub­mis­sions from civ­il so­ci­ety on the con­tro­ver­sial mat­ter, some for and some against child mar­riages.

"What do we do?" Al-Rawi asked.

"Do we be­lieve we should still stone adul­ter­ers?"

He said the Gov­ern­ment's Bill seeks to pro­tect the voice of the child.

Tem­po­rary Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor, Maulana Waffie Mo­hammed, giv­ing an in­di­ca­tion in which di­rec­tion the Op­po­si­tion may go, said the Is­lam­ic Coun­cil of Schol­ars he rep­re­sents did not sup­port the Bill.

Mo­hammed said he and the Coun­cil were guid­ed by the Q'uran which al­lows girls to be mar­ried at age 12.

He said this was the com­mand of God.