Between risk and referral: child marriage protection for Rohingya girls in Cox’s Bazar. Legal ambiguity, camp governance and community decision-making in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Abstract

This thesis examines how ambiguities within Bangladesh’s child-marriage protection framework affect the implementation of child-marriage protections for Rohingya girls in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. Although Bangladesh formally prohibits child marriage through the Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017, the framework contains interpretive uncertainties concerning “special circumstances”, the best interests of the minor, guardian consent, child participation, age verification and the continuing protection of girls who have already been married. These uncertainties become more complex in the Rohingya camp context, where formal law operates through humanitarian administration, documentation systems, camp-level governance and community-based decision-making. The thesis adopts a qualitative socio-legal methodology. It combines doctrinal analysis of international and domestic legal instruments with secondary literature, humanitarian reports and empirical material from three semi-structured interviews. The interviews provide situated perspectives on child-marriage decision-making, legal awareness, community mediation, documentation and access to protection. The analysis is guided by feminist legal theory, legal pluralism and a human rights-based approach. The thesis argues that the implementation gap is not caused by legal ambiguity alone. Rather, ambiguity becomes harmful when it travels through unequal family relations, community mediation, partial documentation and fragmented protection pathways. The interview findings suggest that child marriage may be understood by adults as safety, honour or betterment before it is recognised as a rights violation. As a result, Rohingya girls’ access to protection may depend on whether their situation becomes visible to the right actor at the right time. The thesis concludes that effective protection requires child-sensitive participation, reliable age verification, accountable referral pathways and continuing support for married girls as rights-holders.