[Al Ahram] Bangladesh must step up efforts to halt an "epidemic" of child marriage throughout the country where nearly one third of girls wed before they turn 15, a rights group said Tuesday. Although Bangladesh has cut poverty levels in recent years, numbers of child marriages remain huge, partly because of regular natural disasters that force already struggling families into greater desperation, Human Rights Watch
... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge....
said.
The campaign group urged Bangladesh's government to abandon a proposal to lower the legal age for marriage for girls from 18 to 16, a move it said would only fuel the crisis.
"It will send the message to the parents that child marriage is okay. The government should act before another generation of girls is lost," Heather Barr, author of a HRW report, told news hounds in Dhaka.
Barr also called on Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
to "follow through" on commitments she made at a global summit last year in London on the issue to stop girls as young as 10 marrying.