English 
Malay By: Cso Platform For Reform – Child Cluster
Organisation/ Individual: Child Rights Coalition Malaysia (CRCM)
Policy Code: 2e Child
Problem Statement and Current Policy:
1. The tri-legal systems of the Civil, Syariah and Native Courts are not cohesive. 2. There is a lack of disaggregated, centralised, systematic data on child marriage and FGM cases. 3. Children who experience pre-marital sex or pregnancies out of wedlock often enter into child marriages to preserve their family’s dignity, avoid stigmatization, and/or perpetrators using marriage to legitimise their act and circumvent prosecution. 4. For girls between age 16-18 under Civil law, and girls below age 16 under Syariah law, can marry with the authorization of the Chief Minister or Menteri Besar. In Sabah and Sarawak there is no minimum age under native law. Children of migrant labourers from Indonesia may be married according to the cultural laws of their native country. 5. The Syariah law reforms and its application are not standardized and consistent throughout Malaysia. 6. The National Fatwa Council in Malaysia mandates female circumcision for Muslim girls and women.
Value(s) and Belief:
Reform the laws governing the protection and safety of children and confidential reporting mechanisms with judicial, enforcement, medical authorities including SCAN and OSCC staff, first responders, child protectors, social workers, teachers, school staff, NGOs, religious authorities, families, children from all communities. Harmful practices cannot be justified by religion.
Proposal of Solution and Call for Action:
1. Raise and standardise the age of sexual consent and marriage to 18 for all children. 2. Endorse a law* that addresses child marriages, penalises perpetrators including facilitators of child marriages. 3. Synergise national laws to stop and address child marriages. 4. Strengthen provisions of laws relating to sexual offences against children to ensure marriage is not a defence to the stated offences. 5. Include prohibition and response of FGM in national laws. 6. Accept and implement UN Resolution 71/175. 7. Establish interagency disaggregated data collection mechanism on child marriage and FGM cases. 8. Expand the present National Strategy Plan to Handle the Causes of Child Marriage to include comprehensive prevention and response programmes. 9. Avail non-discriminatory access to national child protection systems and services to all children. 10. Incentivise parents/caregivers through financial aid or employment to promote girls to stay in school and complete their tertiary education. 11. Institutionalise dialogues and regular awareness raising and capacity building on the negative impact of child marriage and FGM and comprehensive sexuality education and emphathetic support available to vulnerable minors.
Additional information:
1. UCAN. (2018, October 23). Malaysia: PM Mahathir Mohamad Bans Child Marriage. Euroasia review 2. Sisters in Islam & Asia-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (2018)) 3. Sarawak had the highest rates of child marriage in the country, with 1,609 incidents involving non-Muslim girls from 2005 to 2015, and 1,284 Muslim cases from 2011 to 2016 (Ng, Seah and Tay (2020)). 4. National Strategy Plan in Handling the Causes of Child Marriage (2020-2025) https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/11/22/with-seven-states-refusing-childmarriage- ban-onus-on-putrajaya-to-convince/1812193 5. FGM-(International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies Malaysia (2019)). 6. FGM – (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (2018) p5). 7. Factors that drive child marriages include gender discrimination, patriarchal practices, poverty, gender inequality and lack of awareness and enforcement (UNICEF, 2018). 8. Laws for reform – Federal Territories Enactments in Age of Majority Act 1971, Law Reform (Marriage & Divorce) Act 1976, Child Act and Islamic Family Law Section 8 provisions and Malaysian Penal Code (Act 574), Section 375. 9. Since 2015, 83-85% of Muslim baby girls are medically circumcised demonstrating that Malaysia institutionalises this practice and does not idenitfy it as harmful. During Malaysia’s Universal Periodic Review in November 2018, this practice was promoted as “cultural obligation”. 10. *Indian Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 11. All children includes refugees, migrants and stateless children, pregnant unmarried girls and survivors of FGM. 12. Facilitators of child marriages include religious authorities, parents/ caregivers, community leaders and all who endorse child marriages 13. National laws include SOACA, Child Act 2001, Penal Code and Anti-Trafficking laws, Syariah laws 14. UN Resolution 71/175 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 19 December 2016 on Child, Early and Forced Marriage and CEDAW Committee’s 2018 Concluding Observations to Malaysia to stop FGM. 15. Interagency disaggregated data collection includes mechanism number of police reports, prosecutions and convictions with police, JKM Hospitals, clinics, NGOs, UN agencies, schools, community-based organisations and learning centres. 16. National child protection systems and services include legal, medical, mental health, case management, sexual reproductive health and education services. 17. https://www.unicef.org/malaysia/ending-child-marriage Ending Child Marriage Advocacy Campaign 2021