Child marriage persists in Pakistan for many reasons, and ending practice requires measures that are sensitive to the complexity of the problem. Debates on child marriage tend to reduce this complexity to two opposite legal positions. Defenders of gender equality and child welfare support the highest minimum age limits for child marriage and the hardest criminal sanctions. Religious parties and lobby, on the other hand, affirm that the lowest minimum age limits are consistent with Islamic law.
The discussion about the recently promulgated Law on Restriction of Child Marriage Restrictions of Islamabad Children’s territory is coming between these two positions. Research on the specific merits of the reform of the proposed law and its probable impact is lost in the polarized debate.
High rates of child marriage are a cause and effect of gender inequality, child negligence or abuse. Although the defenders of strict criminal laws are right to recognize the damage of child marriage, they do not respond, or even consider, if a law that increases the minimum age of marriage and imposes harder sanctions effectively address this damage.
Islamabad’s law increases the minimum age of girls from 16 to 18 years. The new law also increases criminal sanctions for parents who organize a child marriage, Nikah registrars who register a child marriage and adult men who kill themselves in marriages with girls. Sindh and Islamabad are now the only two regions in Pakistan with minimal uniform marriage ages for boys and girls. The Law of Sindh, approved in 2013, also increased the minimum age of marriage for girls and imposed tougher sanctions.
An aspect of child marriage, ignored by law and those in charge of formulating policies, is marriages self -inferred by adolescents.
Until now, the law in Sindh has failed. A study by UNFPA and the Population Council reported a general increase in girls’ marriages in Sindh between 2014 and 2019: marriages of girls under 15 years increased by 1.5 percent and marriages under 18 increased by 2.2pc.
Very few cases have led to convictions. In response to an information request, the Sindh police revealed that between 2018 and 2024, 30 convictions under the Child Marriage Law were recorded from 272 FIRS. Of these, 23 were in the Hyderabad division. In the great divisions of Karachi and Sukkur, there were no sentences during the five -year period.
If Sindh’s law has so far failed to stop child marriage, why should we expect the impact of the law on Islamabad to be different? If we take the implementation of the new law seriously, should we not try to understand the reasons behind the failure of the law in Sindh?
The persistence of child marriage is partially explained by inaccessibility, inefficiencies and corruption in the application of the law. Another factor, completely ignored by law and those in charge of formulating policies, is marriages self -investigated by adolescents. Child marriage data does not distinguish between marriages forced by family members and those arranged by young people themselves, but a large number of cases that reach courts and are informed in the media involve young people who choose to marry.
Although the general application of the law is poor, the evidence suggests that the criminal law is invoked more effectively to address such cases. Until recently, the courts in Karachi would send the married girls arrested by the police to the Panah shelter house. When I visited the facilities in 2023, the staff reported that all married girls sent to Panah through judicial orders had escaped their home to marry their partners and refused to return to their parents after being found by the police. None of the girls referring to Panah was rescued from a marriage organized by parents or members of the community.
These cases suggest that the police sometimes recover the girls fleeing from parents but fails miserably when it comes to preventing and punishing children’s marriages forced by family members.
No one seems to want to understand why girls run away from home to marry. I talked to Panah girls and talked to many girls who come to court after their parents initiate criminal procedures against their partners. Some patterns arise. The girls usually belong to the origins of the working class. If they ever went to school, their parents took them out when they arrived at their adolescence, and spent their days doing domestic work. Most of them flee from home after their parents fix their marriage to someone with whom they do not want to marry, generally a cousin or other relative.
Some girls shared very disturbing accounts of the abuse they face in their parents’ house. His only escape, in a patriarchal society that promotes male dependence, was to escape his home with a man. The welfare mechanisms of the State could not protect these girls from this abuse. When it came to rescuing the “honor” of the parents, the State reacted quickly recovering the girl and arrested the man with whom she escaped.
It is tragic that, for many girls in Pakistan, escape and marriage they are the only alternative to escape. But any reform measure that seeks to deter and punish this alternative without addressing its underlying cause cannot promote child welfare. In fact, it will make young girls and men more vulnerable to family violence and imprisonment.
The possibility that girls can be prepared and exploited by their male partners should be taken very seriously. Protecting this possibility would require investigation into the circumstances around escape and marriage. This would imply providing advice and a safe environment to girls, and trust the construction of families and communities to allow frank communication.
A law focused on criminal sanctions will not achieve this. The political measures that promote education and child health, and social reform efforts that defy the patriarchal mentality are much more likely to address the promoters of child marriage. We cannot criminalize our departure from this problem.
The writer is a lawyer
Malkani.sara@gmail.com
Posted in Dawn, June 6, 2025
