The Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing ten cas­es of child mar­riages which are deemed to have oc­curred in cu­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, the au­thor­i­ty's di­rec­tor Shar­i­fa Ali-Ab­dul­lah said yes­ter­day.

The cas­es raised eye­brows amongst mem­bers of the au­thor­i­ty who ini­tial­ly looked in­to them as they were be­ing record­ed by the au­thor­i­ty, she said, prompt­ing them to take a clos­er look.

Ali-Ab­dul­lah raised the cas­es dur­ing a net­work­ing lun­cheon and round­table dis­cus­sion host­ed by the Pow­er­ful Ladies of T&T at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, which was ti­tled "Pro­tect­ing our Women and Girls: Time To Step It Up T&T."

First giv­ing the gath­er­ing fig­ures they had on sex­u­al abuse, she said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 chil­dren were liv­ing with adult men and of that fig­ure 50 are preg­nant and ten are mar­ried

She said of those ten chil­dren who were mar­ried, "nine of them are be­tween the ages of 16 and 17, one is 14 to 15 and we're in­ves­ti­gat­ing those cas­es."

She not­ed that while some mi­nors will­ing­ly en­ter in­to some mar­riages, it was im­por­tant for the au­thor­i­ty to probe these ten cas­es to make sure noth­ing un­to­ward oc­curred.

"What we are in­ves­ti­gat­ing is to un­der­stand whether there is ex­ploita­tion, whether chil­dren are be­ing sold in­to mar­riages, whether there is col­lu­sion," she said in an in­ter­view with CNC3 af­ter­wards, adding, "I think it is im­por­tant to look at every sin­gle one of those cas­es."

She said the au­thor­i­ty would not hes­i­tate to in­ter­vene in a case if any­thing un­to­ward was found to have oc­curred.

Ali-Ab­dul­lah said be­cause there had been much de­bate on the is­sue of child mar­riages cur­rent­ly in the pub­lic do­main, it was im­por­tant that the au­thor­i­ty con­duct a pro­fes­sion­al ex­er­cise so as to be able to con­tribute valid in­for­ma­tion to the di­a­logue.

"It's im­por­tant that we put things on the ta­ble and that we're are able to ad­dress these is­sues in a very log­i­cal and ra­tio­nal way and we need to get all sides of the sto­ry," she told the gath­er­ing dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion.

Mean­while, the Chil­dren's Ark al­so weighed in on the is­sue of child mar­riages yes­ter­day, call­ing for greater ed­u­ca­tion on the top­ic as well as leg­isla­tive changes.

In a re­lease, the Chil­dren's Ark said it hoped that with wide­spread di­a­logue on the mat­ter, the var­i­ous re­li­gious sects would re­frain from de­mon­is­ing one an­oth­er and their cul­tur­al tra­di­tions.

The NGO, which said it is com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing the rights and wel­fare of the child, said while the Hin­du Mar­riage Act, Mus­lim Mar­riage Act and the Or­isha Mar­riage Act con­tained pro­vi­sions en­abling mi­nors to en­ter in­to legal­ly valid mar­riages, T&T had al­so signed and rat­i­fied the UN Con­ven­tion on Rights of the Child, which car­ries with it a sense of du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect chil­dren's rights.

Pres­i­dent of the Chil­dren's Ark, Si­mone de la Bastide, said, "The laws which al­low the mar­riage of mi­nors are in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of our in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions. These laws put in per­il the wel­fare and best in­ter­ests of the child."