PARLIAMENT | A total of 1,665 girls married underage in 2018, according to new data released by the government in a parliamentary written reply yesterday.

Of these figures, 1,372 of the girls were Muslims of various races, and 293 were non-Muslims.

There were also 191 boys who were married underage in 2018, of whom 170 were Muslim and 21 non-Muslim.

Previously, in 2018, data from 2017 showed that 968 non-Muslim children had married adults, while 877 Muslim children married adults in the same year.

Child-marriage proponents had used the 2017 data to say that more underage non-Muslims had gotten married to adults in an effort to push back against efforts to raise the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18...