Reappraisal of Governance for Underage Marriage in Malaysia

Marriage before the age of 18 is a reality for many young women in most part of the world including Malaysia. Despite being prohibited by international human rights laws, underage marriage continues to be practised. This study attempts to examine the existing legal and administrative mechanism and to find out their weaknesses in governing the underage marriage for Muslim people in Malaysia. In this research, laws and administrative procedures of Federal Territories relating to underage marriage are chosen to represent other states of Malaysia. For this, these data are mainly from Islamic Family Law Federal Territories Act 1984 and related administrative procedures and formalities. Other relevant laws and administrative procedures are studied and analysed, whereas for the theoretical part, data from library research were sought. This research also employed a semi-structured interviews conducted on several respondents from the related institutions. This finding of this research shows some significant weaknesses in the governance of underage marriage from both legal and administrative aspects which contribute to the country’s rising rate of underage marriage. This study also proposes important recommendations for improvement which could reduce the rate of underage marriage.