The government should ban child marriages in its proposed new law to stop sexual abuse against children, DAP lawmaker Teo Nie Ching said today.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak yesterday announced that the new law would be tabled to address sexual crimes against children.

Teo said child marriage should be included in the new law because nearly 15,000 girls below the age of 15 were in married in Malaysia in 2010, as revealed by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.

"Malaysia adopted a United Nations resolution to end child marriage, at the Human Rights Council in October 2013.

"It's time for our government to honour our pledge and I hope our government will do so when tabling the bill," Teo, the Kulai MP, said in a statement.

Although sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16 is a crime under the Penal Code, child marriages are still allowed under special provisions of the syariah or native courts.

There have also been recorded cases where a minor and an adult enter a marriage through religious or customary rites, but the marriage is not officially registered.

In 2010, a UN report stated that more than 82,000 married women in Malaysia are aged between 15 and 19 years.

The age of consent for girls in Malaysia is 16.

MPs in the dark

Teo also called on the government to make public the contents of the new bill, including to opposition MPs who have campaigned for stringent legislation on the issue.

She said opposition MPs are in the dark over the bill despite active participation in the bi-partisan parliamentary women's caucus.

"(Najib) can have our assurance that the bill will receive the support of all MPs as many opposition MPs, including myself have all the while been campaigning for a more stringent and comprehensive law to address crime against children.

"There is no need to keep the opposition in the dark until the day the bill is tabled in Parliament," she said.

Najib said yesterday that he hoped the Child Sexual Offences Bill 2017 will receive support form all MPs.

"The bill should not be opposed by any political party," he said while opening a seminar on addressing child sexual crimes in Kuala Lumpur.

He added that the government also plans to establish a special court to deal with such crimes, separate from the existing Children's Court, which deals with child offenders.

Some 5,779 sexual abuse cases against children were recorded between 2010 and 2015 - an average of at least two a day - official statistics show.

Police said that in 2015 and 2016, there were 412 cases where the sexual offender was a family member of the child victim.

Police also recorded 2,579 cases of rape, 1,423 cases of molest and and 422 cases of unnatural sex involving those under the age of 18 in 2015 and 2016.

"These cases should not have happened. We should not allow our children to continue to be subjected to exploitation by sexual predators," Najib said.