Nepal, March 26 -- The debate over the legal marriage age has again taken centre stage. In 2022, when Govinda Koirala Bandi was the Minister for Law, Justice, and Parliamentary Affairs, he announced the government was preparing to lower the legal age of marriage. The argument was that it was nonsensical to allow people to gain citizenship at 16 and voting rights at 18 but restrict marriage until 20. Child rights and women's rights activists were unconvinced and opposed it, asserting that this would reverse years of efforts made to combat child marriage. Three years later, the government is now in the final stages of registering an amendment bill to revise the current laws to either reduce the minimum marriage age or ease the penalties for...