''The Government of Malaysia should provide refugees with the rights to work and access education in order to end child marriage and ensure protections for refugee girls, said the Rohingya Women Development Network (RWDN) and Fortify Rights today. Malaysia Foreign Minister Saiffudin Abdullah said on Tuesday that the government is considering options to provide refugees with access to public schools, hospitals, and employment. “Children should be in school, not forced into marriage,” said Sharifah Shakirah, founder and director of RWDN in Malaysia. “We encourage the Malaysian government to urgently ban child marriage and provide refugee families with legal access to jobs, schools, and health care, which would advance refugee and child rights.” RWDN and Fortify Rights conducted 11 interviews in Malaysia and Bangladesh between 2018 and 2019 with Rohingya child brides, former child brides, family members of child brides, and men arranging to marry or married to child brides. During these interviews, Rohingya girls described situations of domestic servitude, beatings, and hopelessness in Malaysia. Rohingya families also cite economic hardship and insecurity as drivers of child marriage. “I am physically and verbally abused by my husband,” a Rohingya refugee girl, 16, told RWDN and Fortify Rights in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 1, 2019. “I want an education. I want to be a teacher. I am not happy about getting married.” Originally from Buthidaung Township in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the 16-year-old girl married a 24-year old Rohingya man in Malaysia on January 1, 2018. The girl’s family arranged the marriage due to financial difficulties. She told RWDN and Fortify Rights that she is now confined to a one-bedroom apartment in Kuala Lumpur where she cooks and cleans, describing slave-like conditions in a situation of domestic servitude...''