Urgent need to stop child marriages in India: Smriti Irani at Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation event

A National Consultation on Child Marriage Free India was organized by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation in New Delhi on Monday. Union Minister for Women and Child Development & Minority Affairs, Smriti Irani was the Chief Guest at the event while Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi presided over the event.

New Delhi:Extending support to the 'Child Marriage Free India' campaign run by Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation, Union Minister Smriti Irani on Monday said that child marriage is a crime and there is a need to end it completely.

A National Consultation on Child Marriage Free India was organized by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation in New Delhi on Monday. Union Minister for Women and Child Development & Minority Affairs, Smriti Irani was the Chief Guest at the event while Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi presided over the event.

Addressing the event, Irani said, "Child marriage is a crime and we have to end it completely. We will make child marriage a history. We should aim to bring it down from 23 percent to zero percent. The government is committed to this." Referring to the efforts of Kailash Satyarthi in the fight against child marriage, she said, "He is a grassroots person. During Covid-19 Satyarthi ji worked closely with the government for the welfare of orphaned children. When the government was trying to search for and rehabilitate such children, Kailash Satyarthi found many such children."

Irani said that "law was doing its job to stop child marriage, but people have to come along with the government for this. Men also have to be brought together in the fight against child marriage". She noted that to weed out social evils like child marriage from India, the government, all voluntary organizations, and people have to work unitedly and cohesively. "We have to create more people like Kailash Satyarthi so that we can speed up our efforts for eradication of this social evil," she said.

Speaking on the occasion, Satyarthi said, “We consider child marriage as a social evil and legal crime. In the country, there is more than 23 percent of women of the age group 20 to 24 years who got married before the age of 18 years due to Child Marriage to reduce the same to 10 percent in the year 2025 and make India child-marriage-free by 2030.”

Chairperson National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Chairpersons State Commissions for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCRs) of 14 states and their representatives and more than 100 voluntary organizations took part in this consultation. Kailash Satyarthi launched the Child Marriage Free India Campaign on October 16 last year, with the aim of eradicating Child Marriage in the country by 2030. It is the world’s largest grassroots movement against child marriage.

The campaign was the result of the clarion call given by Satyarthi to initiate collective action against the social evil of child marriage. The highlight of the launch of Child Marriage Free India Campaign was that it was led by more than 75,000 grass-root women leaders across 10,000 villages representing 26 States of the country. The goal of Child Marriage Free India Campaign is to reduce child marriages from 23.3% to 10% by the year 2025.