Bangladesh — [Sir Alan Meale in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:24 pm on 17 June 2015.

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Photo of Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Shadow SNP Westminster Group Leader (Trade and Investment) 3:24, 17 June 2015

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I pay tribute to Mrs Main for her excellent presentation, and look forward to working with her in future. I am of mixed heritage and have background from Pakistan, which shares issues with Bangladesh. I want to focus on child marriage, climate change, which was mentioned by Jonathan Reynolds, and climate justice.

Last Tuesday, Human Rights Watch issued a report called “Marry Before Your House is Swept Away”, ranking Bangladesh fourth in the world for child marriage, and describing the practice as an epidemic. Sixty-five per cent. of young women in Bangladesh are married before 18, and 29% before 15, according to UNICEF figures. Child marriage leads to dangerously early pregnancies, lack of education, and greater chances of domestic violence and poverty—issues that are, of course, of great concern to all.

Meanwhile, however, the UN has praised Bangladesh for meeting other development goals, including on the reduction of poverty, gender parity in school enrolment, and reduction of maternal mortality. If some of the development goals have been met, the question must be raised of what is going wrong on child marriage. Gender discrimination has been mentioned as one possibility in the Human Rights Watch report, along with desperate poverty that means parents cannot afford to feed or educate their daughters, and natural disasters caused by climate change, which force families to adopt survival strategies.