by Shristi Kafle
KATHMANDU, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Seventeen-year-old Lalita B. from the southern plain of Nepal was married against her will at the age of 12 to a 37-year-old man and became pregnant with no knowledge of reproductive health or family planning.
She went on to give birth to two babies but both tragically died soon after being born. And while she now has a healthy third child, the young mother is in unbearable physical pain and her husband, now married to another child, has left her with zero support and a bleak outlook for her future.
Lalita's dire situation is a reality in Nepalese society where child marriage is still prevalent. Her story was highlighted in the report, "Our Time to Sing and Play: Child Marriage in Nepal" released by a U.S.-based organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently.
Nepal has the third-highest rate of child marriages in Asia after Bangladesh and India, with 37 percent of girls marrying before the age of 18.
While Nepalese law holds that the minimum age of marriage is 20, child marriage continues in the southern belts of the Himalayan country, with the majority of child marriages in Nepal taking place in the Dalit indigenous and marginalized communities.
The report says that the Nepalese government has yet to take the concrete steps needed to achieve the goal of eradicating child marriages.
"The government in 2014 said that by 2020, it will strive to end child marriages. And then in March this year during the Girls Summit held in Kathmandu, the government said it will end child marriage by 2030."
"It is a step in the right direction that the state has highlighted this issue as a priority, but more concrete action is needed," Heather Barr, Senior Women's Rights Researcher at HRW said at the report-releasing ceremony.
Nepal's government, after its initial pledge, shifted its goal of ending child marriages to 2030, the deadline for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, in a sign that the government is not fully prepared to take the necessary steps to eradicate child marriages from this Asian nation.
According to the report, poverty, lack of access to education and child labor practices are the major factors leading to child marriages. In addition, social pressure, lack of access to family planning information, harmful practices including dowry and misconceptions about menstruation, are secondary factors for children being forced into marriage as young as 12 or 13.
Rasmila Shakya, a children's rights activist at Children Workers in Nepal, an NGO committed to campaigning for children, told Xinhua: "Things are getting better gradually. There are many community-level programs to raise awareness about the dangers of child marriage. There are help lines, informative tools like booklets and life-skills packages targeted to youths."
Shakya pointed out however that child marriage has been illegal in Nepal since 1963 and that the government of Nepal has obligations under both international and regional human rights laws to protect the rights of children. To this end, the government here has developed a national strategy to end child marriage, which was endorsed in March 2016.
The children's rights activist added, "We have already got a national strategy. Now, we really need to bring all the stakeholders, including different ministries, together so that they can integrate the points mentioned in the strategy into their action plans," adding that the implementation of law is necessary."
Activists claim that although Nepal has been raising awareness and increasing the access of children to education, there remains plenty of work to be done, both socially, legally and at all levels in government.
The latest report has recommended the government to widen its efforts to empower women and girls, take measures to end domestic violence and child labor, and to increase access to education and health services to achieve its target.
Manju Khatiwada from the National Human Rights Commission said: "We have strong provisions to combat this distressing social practice. But it's true that the implementation has been weak. We all need to work together to end this social malady."
