In December 2016 the Bangladeshi Parliament discussed the Child Marriage Restraint Act 2016, a bill which reportedly includes a special provision allowing child marriage at any age in “special cases”, such as “accidental” or “illegal” pregnancy, or where a marriage would protect a girl’s “honour”. The current legal minimum age of marriage in Bangladesh is 18 for women and 21 for men. The exception reportedly provides no minimum age. There are fears that such a provision would legitimise statutory rape and encourage the practice of child marriage in a country with one of the highest child marriage rates in the world.
South Asia Citizens Web
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Bangladesh: Controversial Draft Law Allowing Child Marriage in "special cases" is The Road to Regression
17 January 2017 -
India: Agasthyamala ban on women entry - Unconstitutional and a breach of conservation treaties
17 January 2017Denying entry of women to the Agasthyamala, a breach of gender justice - letter to the Kerala forest minister by S Faizi
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Universal Basic Income For India Suddenly Trendy. Look Out
by , 16 January 2017Universal basic income is a nice idea in principle, but as far as India today is concerned, it sounds like premature articulation. Further, this idea could easily become a Trojan horse for the dismantling of hard-won entitlements of the underprivileged...
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Parvez Mahmood depicts his family rebuilding their lives after their 1947 migration from Amritsar
15 January 2017My father was serving as a draftsman in the Railways Workshop Amritsar when the Partition of Punjab forced him and his family to migrate to Pakistan.
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Concocted Stories Gather Weight by Being Repeated: The Myth of Lawrence of Arabia
by , 14 January 2017The quickest and easiest way, even in the 21st century, to alleviate the angst caused by a politically influential woman is to slander her. One such libelous story was of my maternal grandmother Akbar Jehan’s betrothal or marriage to Lawrence of Arabia.
