The Be­lize Sen­ate has ap­proved leg­is­la­tion amend­ing the Mar­riage Act and rais­ing the le­gal mar­riage age to 18 years, as well as elim­i­nat­ing the pro­vi­sion al­low­ing par­ents or guardians to con­sent to the mar­riage of mi­nors.

The leg­is­la­tion was dri­ven by a group of young peo­ple who brought the is­sue to the Be­lize’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The leg­is­la­tion re­ceived unan­i­mous sup­port from the Sen­ate, in­clud­ing en­dorse­ments from the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Ea­mon Courte­nay, and his  coun­ter­part on the Op­po­si­tion bench, Mike Peyr­e­fitte.

“Madam Pres­i­dent, with­out any con­tra­dic­tion or con­di­tion, it is the po­si­tion of the mem­bers of the Sen­ate and in­deed the gov­ern­ment of Be­lize that this Bill is im­por­tant,” Courte­nay said.

“It is trans­for­ma­tive.  It is in the Be­lizean peo­ple’s in­ter­est, and we seek the sup­port of the en­tire Sen­ate for this mod­ern­iz­ing piece of so­cial leg­is­la­tion. Madam Pres­i­dent, we are de­bat­ing a mat­ter of con­sti­tu­tion­al im­por­tance,” he stat­ed.

He added: “This is a hu­man rights is­sue. I put it as high as that be­cause for too long, we have al­lowed in our coun­try in­fants to be mar­ried and in­fants to be mar­ried with the con­sent of their par­ents.”

His Op­po­si­tion coun­ter­part, Peyr­e­fitte, said:

“There have been in­stances when chil­dren are pres­sured to—in some cas­es, some would say—prac­ti­cal­ly sold off to grown men who want to mar­ry lit­tle girls, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause that’s the tar­get of that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that have been tak­ing place in terms of this con­sent.”

“Madam Pres­i­dent, what I know for sure, in the crim­i­nal courts in par­tic­u­lar, you would have these men who would com­mit the crime of un­law­ful car­nal knowl­edge, who would be en­gaged in sex­u­al acts that young girls un­der 16, to pro­tect from pros­e­cu­tion, they would go and bribe the par­ents or bribe the peo­ple to have these chil­dren mar­ry them so that they can’t un­der the law, as their wife, tes­ti­fy against them in a court of law, which gets them scott-free from that very egre­gious crime,” he said.

Peyr­e­fitte de­scribed the amend­ment as “a very good piece of leg­is­la­tion.”

He added: “I think that mar­riage is such a se­ri­ous act and a se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that you can on­ly be en­gaged in that act on your own free will.” —BEL­MOPAN, Be­lize (CMC)