Guwahati: The National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, India will organise a two-day ‘National Conference on Child Marriage’ in collaboration with the South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children (SAIEVAC) at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on Wednesday.
The main objective of the conference is to revisit the issue of child marriage from a human rights perspective at the national level by consulting experts from the government and non-government organisations and others so as to make a call for a national action plan on ending child marriage.
In India, according to the NFHS-3 and NFHS-4 data, there is a significant decline in the actual percentage of child marriage both for females (20.6%) and males (12%). The national average of child marriage for females is down from 47.4% to 26.8% and for males from 32.3%to 20.3%. However, it becomes imperative to focus on analysing and addressing the percentage in which the practice still persists for various reasons despite a decades-old law banning girls under the age of 18 – and boys under 21 – from marrying.
