look news india
The global debate about child marriage focuses primarily on South Asian countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, as well as some African countries. The focus on these regions has suppressed reports of the practice in other parts of the world, especially the superpower US.
So far it is widely believed that child marriage is a problem limited to the underdeveloped regions of the world, but the fact that child marriage still enjoys legal status in most parts of the US shows that the country needs urgent reform. India has achieved remarkable success in the fight against child marriage by making strict laws on child marriage and strictly enforcing them. In India, this practice is considered a punishable offense while in the US there is a lot of contradiction on this issue. Although child marriage is illegal in most countries of the world, child marriage has become a serious issue in 37 states of the US. According to the US organization Unchained at Last, child marriage, or marriage below the age of 18, was legal in all 50 states of the US till 2017. In 2018, New Jersey and Delaware became the first two states of the US to stop this human rights violation. They were followed by American Samoa in 2018, which banned this evil practice. In 2020, the US Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania and Minnesota banned the practice, and Rhode Island and New York abolished it in 2021. Massachusetts will phase out the practice in 2022, and Vermont, Connecticut and Michigan in 2023, and Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire in 2024. The practice has been legalised in 37 US states since 2000, and more than 300,000 children under the age of 10 have been married in the US.
