The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has recommended that the women and children affairs ministry refrain from taking any legislative measures to lower the girls' minimum marriageable age below 18.

The recommendation came at a discussion yesterday on the 5th Periodic Report on the Rights of the Child in Bangladesh.

The ministry and Unicef jointly organised the programme at the city's Bangabandhu International Conference Centre.

The CRC, composed of 18 independent child rights experts nominated and selected by state parties of the UN General Assembly, monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty to protect and promote child rights.

Unicef Country Representative Edouard Beigbeder said instead of putting an exception clause in the proposed Child Marriage Restraint Act to allow marriage of girls aged under 18, the questions of pregnant teenagers and eloping adolescents should be treated by other relevant legislations.

The issues of adolescent pregnancy and elopement should be viewed as protection issues, he told The Daily Star. The Child Act, 2013 includes measures to deal with these issues.

He urged the ministries concerned to expedite the adoption of the law's rules that would elaborate the protection measures. 

Beigbeder, who accompanied the Bangladesh delegation to the CRC session in Geneva last September, spoke as a guest of honour at the programme.

The CRC suggested the law ministry raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to an internationally acceptable standard.

“Currently, it is at the discretion of the judges in cases of children aged between nine and 12 years whether they can be held criminally accountable,” said Beigbeder.

He suggested that the government amend the Penal Code to increase the age of criminal responsibility.

Bikash Kishore Das, additional secretary of the women and children affairs ministry, stressed the need for a children's ombudsman in the country.

Speakers at the programme also made recommendations for 10 more ministries, including social welfare, primary and mass education, education, health, law and home affairs.

Replying to a question from the audience about street children, Nasima Begum, secretary of the women and children affairs ministry, said the government recently took steps to rehabilitate street children in Karwan Bazar to a shelter home in Mirpur, but the children refused to go there.

“Some syndicates who use these children should be addressed,” she said adding that although over 1,000 seats in 85 state-run children's lie vacant, many children are sleeping on the streets.

Ministry officials, development partners and representatives from local and international NGOs were present.

Bangladesh ratified the Child Rights Convention in 1990 with some reservations and submitted its first report to the CRC in 1995.

The country's fifth and last report was submitted on October 2012 and reviewed by the CRC in September last year. The next report will be due on March 2021.