Malaysian Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) Perspective on Child Marriage

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Malaysia play an important role in advocating prevention of child marriage and shaping the society's view on this harmful practice. Despite the Malaysian government's effort, curbing child marriage faces several challenges. Some segments of the society agree and support the government's effort while other segments of the society oppose the legal reform of raising the marriageable age to 18 years old for both genders. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the perspectives of Malaysian CSOs on the issue of child marriage. A roundtable discussion (RTD) was conducted with 11 members of Malaysian CSOs representing children and women-based organizations. The recorded conversation of RTD was transcribed verbatim before coding into specific themes and sub-themes. This study found that majority of the participants opposed child marriage due to children rights' violation, misunderstanding of children's age and concept of marriage. However, some Muslim groups had given religious reasoning in supporting child marriage. This led to the mixture of stance among the CSOs representative from total disagreement, conditional agreement and total agreement towards child marriage. Several justifications cited by the participants in opposing child marriage such as violation of children's rights, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) issues and children's vulnerability. Furthermore, participants also proposed CSOs' advocacy in ending child marriage including changing the social narrative, granting girls the right to education and providing SRH education to high risk children.