Lilongwe — Malawi's president, Bingu wa Mutharika, has come under severe pressure from civil society groups who are demanding he scrap a newly-passed bill allowing 16 year olds to marry with the consent of their parents.

    Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to which the country is a party defines a child as "every human being below the age of 18".

     According to IPS the new bill is a slight improvement from the previous law which puts the legal age of youth to marry with parental consent at 15.

    However, activists say 16 is still far too young to get married and call for the minimum age to be raised to 18.

    In Malawi, cultural practices, especially in the north of the country, force girls from poor families, some as young as nine years old, into marriages, particularly when parents need to settle loans.

    So far, Mutharika is non-committal on the matter. He says Malawians should debate the new bill freely and agree on how to move forward.

    "Let the people and all stakeholders, including boys and girls, debate the issue and agree on whether the marriage age should be 18, 21 or 25 as some people are proposing. After the consensus, the matter will go back to parliament," President Mutharika said at a press conference.

    In the meantime, gender and children's rights activists are mounting the pressure.At the launch of the Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA) in early August, a group of young girls of the Malawi Girl Guides Association (MALGA) used songs and chants to call on the country's vice president, Joyce Banda, who is also the country's goodwill ambassador for safe motherhood, to ensure that girls are not allowed to get married at a young age in order to protect them from maternal deaths.

    The Children's Parliament, a gathering of children in the country, which sits once a year to advocate for their rights, also recommended to government that the minimum marriage age should be set at 18.

    MacBain Mkandawire, executive director of NGO Youth Net and Counseling (YONECO), agrees that at the age of 16, marriage will deprive children of education and severely limit their right to mental and physical well-being.