KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1 — A United Nations (UN) rights expert questioned today the need for standard operating procedures (SOP) on child marriage, insisting only 18-year-olds should be allowed to marry.

Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, special rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, also said the root cause of child marriage was patriarchy, not poverty.

"I was very happy to hear Selangor introduced this, but there are SOPs which deal with circumstance,” she said, referring to the Selangor state government amending Shariah laws to raise the legal marriage age for Muslims to 18.

"Why need SOPs if the legal age is 18? There should not be an exception,” Boer-Buquicchio told a press conference after an eight-day fact-finding mission to Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu last week on sexual exploitation.

Boer-Buquicchio said she found that the government had the political will to end child marriage.

"They should reach out to religious authorities and talk to community leaders who practice customary law,” she said.

According to government data, she said 5,362 applications for child marriage to Shariah courts were made between 2013 and 2017.

According to the Sabah Native Affairs office, 2,130 out of 2,191 applications by children aged 14 and 15 to wed were granted between 2003 and 2017, she said.

She found that the families of child brides were often poor, but stressed that the root problem was the prevalence of the "patriarchal structure and attitude” in Malaysia.

"Girls and women are simply disposed of and used as commodities.”

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) federal government and PH state governments have yet to outlaw child marriage, despite recent cases of child brides married to much older men in Kelantan.

Boer-Boquicchio also criticised the detention of children in immigration detention centres and the lack of documentation, particularly in Sabah, for foreign children.

She said child refugees and asylum-seekers were exposed to sale and sexual exploitation.

"The lack of documentation makes you vulnerable, prey to syndicates and traffickers,” she said.

"What I want to recommend to the government — stop the poisonous rhetoric that people who emigrate here pose a security threat.”