(Image Credit: Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
“Although I begged for my life, cried, and told my husband that I was bleeding and struggling to breathe, he still did not leave me alone.” These were the last words of 14-year-old Nurnahar before death took her away. Her name, meaning “the light of the day,” now stands in tragic irony — a child stripped of her right to see the next day simply because of a loophole in Bangladesh’s child marriage laws. Nurnahar’s story is not an isolated incident; it is a haunting reminder that legal loopholes are not mere abstractions — they are instruments of profound harm.
Thoreau once asked if we should obey unjust laws. In Bangladesh, that question is not theoretical — it’s written into our statutes.
The Constitution of Bangladesh (1972) enshrines equality before the law (Article 27) and non-discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, caste, or sex of citizens (Article 28). Yet, the Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA) of 2017 stipulates a minimum marriage age of 18 for females and 21 for males. While some legislators contend that females reach maturity earlier than males, the physiological and psychological ramifications of early marriage are catastrophic. Child brides are highly vulnerable to severe maternal morbidities, including uterine prolapse, endometriosis, and cervical insufficiency, alongside debilitating psychological afflictions such as perinatal anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress.
The statutory sanctioning of a lower marriage age for girls is not merely a reflection of entrenched gender bias; it constitutes an egregious infringement of the right to life, bodily integrity, and holistic development, contravening both Bangladesh’s constitutional guarantees and its obligations under international human rights law. In codifying such exceptions, the state transforms moral compromise into legal doctrine, raising profound questions about the ethical foundations of its legal system.
Law should structure society so that inequalities are only acceptable if they benefit the least advantaged (Difference Principle). Yet, in this instance, the law inflicts disproportionate harm upon precisely those most vulnerable.
The law should serve as both a shield and a sword: a shield for the vulnerable and a sword against injustice. But loopholes like Section 19(2) offer a seductive intellectual comfort: law as a closed system, separate from the messy imperatives of morality, politics, and justice. The principle ideas of Plato’s laws say, ‘Where the laws are above the ruler, the state has the possibility of salvation.’ Yet, positivist declares, “An unjust law is still a law,” and with that tidy separation, washes their hands of the moral implications of their legal system. Bangladesh’s CMRA, Section 19(2), in permitting child marriage under the guise of “special circumstances,” exemplifies this peril — codifying moral compromise and exposing children to irreparable harm.
Furthermore, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Bangladesh in 1990, underscores that children should be shielded from practices that harm their physical, psychological, and educational growth. When laws permit harm under exceptions, they not only fail in their protective role but also implicitly endorse injustice. For instance, countries like Canada, and the Maldives have enforced strict minimum marriage ages of 18 without exceptions. Both countries ratified the UNCRC, and unlike Bangladesh, kept the laws non-derogable.
In 2023, the maternal mortality ratio (per 100 000 live births) in Bangladesh was 115 while in Canada it was 12. Hence, child marriage has decreased radically, safeguarding the right to education, health, and bodily autonomy of children.
The first time I truly felt the weight of this issue was when my parents pressured me, at 16, to pursue medicine, crushing my aspiration to become a lawyer, with the threat of ending my education and marrying me off if I resisted. My fundamental rights to education, to health, and to dignity were at stake. While some might argue that “special circumstances” respect parental authority or prevent social stigma, such reasoning cannot justify the violation of fundamental rights. Legal reform is not a repudiation of tradition; it is a moral imperative affirming that the welfare and dignity of children must take precedence over societal convenience. A five-year-old should be free to nurture plants, build toy houses, or imagine flying airplanes—not to learn the responsibilities of parenthood before they have even lived childhood. An 85-year-old deserves to remember their partner as a person to love, not as a burden imposed decades earlier on a child too young to consent. Across the arc of human life, one principle remains unequivocal: safeguarding children’s futures is non-negotiable.
Another common argument is that majority of Bangladesh is Muslim and believes in early marriage. While respect for faith is essential, Bangladesh is constitutionally a secular state. Thus, legal loopholes that sanction early marriage allow fundamentalist interpretations to dictate state policy, violating secularism and children’s rights alike. Protecting minors through strict enforcement of minimum marriage age laws is fully compatible with religious ethics, which prioritize justice, care, and the prevention of harm, rather than with rigid dogma that perpetuates suffering.
The penalties under CMRA 2017 (8) — imprisonment for up to two years or a fine of fifty thousand taka — are woefully inadequate. They neither deter offenders nor deliver justice to victims like Nurnahar. True reform must abolish Section 19(2), enforce the minimum age uniformly, and strengthen community education, accountability, and monitoring systems. Thus, even in 2025, the rate of child marriage remains alarmingly high in Bangladesh at 50.5%.
The crux of the issue is that loopholes in Bangladesh’s child marriage laws jeopardize the lives, health, and futures of children, underscoring the urgent need for comprehensive legal reform. The work of jurisprudence is not merely to understand the law, but to challenge it, interrogate its legitimacy, and ensure it serves justice. Bangladesh’s legal system must embody a jurisprudence of engagement—one that actively protects children, safeguards their rights, and commands our respect through its fairness and moral integrity.
Legal compliance without moral scrutiny is complicity. In Bangladesh, unjust laws are not to be obeyed but challenged. Only by harmonizing positive law with moral conscience can we ensure that no child’s life is sacrificed to a legal loophole.
Written by Mir Zahra
