Child Marriage Rights and Choice

<p>This book addresses the issue of agency in relation to child marriage.</p><p>In international campaigns against child marriage there is a puzzle of agency: While international human rights institutions celebrate girls’ exercise of their agency not to marry they do not recognize their agency to marry. Child marriage usually defined as ‘any formal marriage or informal union where one or both of the parties are under 18 years of age’ is normally considered as forced – which is to say that it is assumed that are not capable of consenting to marriage. This book however re-examines this assumption through a detailed socio-legal examination of child marriage in Indonesia. Eliciting the multiple competing frameworks according to which child marriage takes place the book considers the complex reasons why children marry. Structural explanations such as lack of opportunities and oppressive social structures are important but not exhaustive explanations. Exploring the subjective reasons by listening to children’s perspectives their stories show that many of them decide to marry for love desire to belong to the community and for new opportunities and hopes. The book then demonstrates how the child marriage framework – and indeed the human rights framework in general – is constructed on too narrow a vision of human agency: One that cannot but fail to respect and promote the agency of all regardless of gender race religion and age.</p><p>This book will be of interest to scholars students and practitioners in the areas of children’s rights legal anthropology and socio-legal studies.</p>