SIS said the government must not hide behind the excuse that it was “powerless” to take immediate action on the matter.
“Every hour they continue to choose to do so, more girls fall between the cracks that they refuse to repair,” it said in a statement.
Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is also women, family and community development minister, previously said Putrajaya was powerless to nullify the marriage between a 41-year-old man and an 11-year-old girl in Gua Musang.
Under Kelantan’s Islamic laws, children under 16 are allowed to get married with the permission of a Shariah Court judge.
Just today, the New Straits Times reported that a 15-year-old girl, also in Kelantan, married a man nearly three decades her senior in July after the Shariah Court gave the go-ahead for the union.
The girl’s parents, who have 12 other children, said they gave permission for her marriage to the 44-year-old man as they wanted her to have a better life.
Last Saturday, meanwhile, it was reported that a 15-year-old girl who had been married for two months to a 30-year-old had gone missing.
SIS said the ongoing trend of child marriages clearly showed that current standard operating procedures lacked the necessary safeguards to protect the interests and welfare of children.
Noting that the girls in both cases were school dropouts, they also criticised the system for failing to prioritise the children’s education and to empower their families with the economic means to keep them in school.
“It is indeed disturbing to realise that even in the era of Malaysia Baru, families are driven to economic desperation to the point that they would marry their children off so that they can ‘have a better life’.
“What is even more worrying is that we have not matured as a society to be able to tell them that keeping children in school is a more sustainable means of breaking the poverty cycle.”