Topic: Eradicating Child Marriage
Country: South Korea
Delegate Name: Paige Etchison
School: Fishers High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All South Korea position papers GLIMUN 2012 committees
A child has been defined by the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child as a “human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.” This means that all below the age of eighteen years are not responsible for their selves, at least from a legal standpoint; until this age is reached, the legal jurisdiction of the child belongs to the parent(s), and the child is unable to enter any form of legal contract on their own. Marriage is a legal contract, therefore the child cannot chose to enter or exit this contract without the consent of their parents. If the point of entering the marriage in the first place was to provide benefits to the child and her family, and these benefits are satisfactorily met by the husband, then the parents will not willingly have their child exit this arrangement. Child marriage presents many issues: health issues for the wife (possible birth defects of any children of the marriage, death of the wife or child during childbirth), possible spousal violence toward the child, and a loss of opportunities such as education to the child, as the child must raise children and run the house, cooking and cleaning, and do not have time for a formal education or even anything beyond the education that they have already received. Though there are such strong ties that keep this practice alive; through tradition and culture, religion, and economic gain; and it is a near impossibility to completely rid the world of this practice, with work it can be eradicated or at the very least reduced.
South Korea understands the problem at hand with child marriage, and wishes to see it eradicated to the best of the abilities of the UN. Yet the people of South Korea also wish for the UN to understand the problems that can/will arise due to religious and cultural ties with the practice of child marriage. It is a traditional practice in many southeastern Asian nations, as well as many central and sub-Saharan African nations, and with the extreme level of grounding that this practice has in these societies ridding the practice is highly unlikely. However, South Korea is more than willing to assist in measures regarding discontinuing this practice. Human rights are human rights, even for minors.
Some possible solutions to this problem would include an education system on the health and emotional problems associated with child marriage, as well as providing alternatives to having to marry children for economic concerns. The educational system would function by taking volunteers to countries with high rates of child marriage, such as India, and having said volunteers work with the people in rural areas of these countries and describe all of the negative effects of child marriage. Then there is the issue of economics and child marriage: people who live in rural, poor areas marry girls at young ages in order to give the girl a better life with a husband to support her, and to give the bride’s family the money that the husband pays in exchange for the girl. Some solutions to this issue would simply be waiting until the girl is old enough to make her own decisions, or providing other economic opportunities to the people in question, like adding new jobs. These jobs should be in manufacturing, such as in factories, with benefits such as basic health care. This would provide income for the girl and her family, which is the alternative to the traditional marriage. These are some possible solutions to the eradication of child marriage.
