Committee: United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF)

Country: United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Delegate: Prasetya Yudha Pratama, Communication
Topic: Examining and Proposing International legislation concerning forced marriages of
children
The practice of marrying young girls have been the most common in some place, such as
Sub-Sahara Africa, South Asia, and some other countries whose still living in traditional
lifestyles. More than 700 million women alive today were married as children. They are
emotionally damaged and having physically abuse. Many families around the world, especially
in developing countries are setting up their daughter on child marriage in order to escape from
poverty. We had done some effort to stop child marriage, although we still have a strong tradition
about marrying a child. We believe that child marriage is as violation on Human Rights and
Convention on the Rights of Child. In UAE, child marriage is still widespread through the
country, especially in rural area. The lack of data and accuracy about the number of child
marriage has become a major problem for this country.
UAE has set a minimum age at 18 and this has led UAE to decrease the child marriage.
Also, permission to marry at a younger age is needed from a judge who must seek and an
approval from the rulers court. UAE also has a rule to require the official registration of all
births and marriages in order to get married. This rule has successfully decreased the number of
child marriage. The percentage of early marriage has dropped from 57 % in 1975 to an
astonishing 8 %1. The economic boomed in UAE also the reason why this country has
successfully lowered the number of child marriage which is usually linked with poverty.
The causes of child marriage still became a global issue, because theres no settlement
about the minimum age for marriage. In order to decrease child marriage, UAE recommends
other countries to do same thing, by set a minimum age of marriage at 18. This settlement could
also prevent the risks of early pregnancy and future maternal death. We might also found out that
the other factor of child marriage is tradition. This tradition has clearly become a root of child
marriage in some of countries. Many parents are under pressure to marry their daughter as soon
as possible to prevent their daughter from sexually active before her marriage. This could bring a
dishonor to the family and community. Also, marriage has often determining womans status in
many societies.
This thought has completely misdirecting people at the wrong framework. To solve this
problem, we believe that government and NGO should work together to educate boys and girls
about sex, reproduction, and the risks of early marriage. We also urged government in each
country to make a strict policy and sanctions for the parents and also people who got involved in
forced marriage of children. Early marriage likely associate with poverty, to stop this,
government should improve peoples economic status by giving them livelihood skills, credit
programs, and others.

1 http://mideastposts.com/showcase/child-brides-action-is-being-taken-at-last/