Human Rights Post
Child marriage has become a norm in Pakistan, especially in rural areas, with the highest rate of this scourge in rural areas being in Sindh province, and this practice disproportionately affects girls.
According to a 2018 UNICEF report, about 18 percent of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18, which is the second highest rate of child marriage in South Asia after Sri Lanka.
Child marriage often occurs in rural areas and in low-income households with little education, the main cause of which is poverty.
The first Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed by the Imperial Legislative Council of India on 28 September 1928, and became a formal law on 1 October 1929.
This law fixed the age of marriage for girls at 14 and for boys at 18. In 1949, after the subcontinent’s independence, it was revised to 15 for girls, and later in 1978 to 18 for girls and 21 for boys.
Punishment for marrying children under the age given in this law included imprisonment for one month or fine of one thousand rupees or both.
Even after the creation of Pakistan, this law remained nominal and the implementation of the law and the rate of punishments were never considered.
Because in Pakistan, child marriages were mostly performed in rural areas and there were many marriages that were arranged as retribution for murder.
And the area chiefs, vaders and jagirdars are operated this system, who also represented their areas in the parliament, so they never allowed any progress regarding this law.
With the passage of time, when such incidents came to light through the media, then the policy makers of this country first drafted a bill to be presented in the National Assembly in 2016 to show it to the outside world.
After all, in 2019, these amendments were approved by the Senate and became the Child Restraint Act 2019.
The specific changes that were made in them were only related to the punishments given in Clause No. 5, in which the punishment of the offense was increased from one month to a maximum of three years and a minimum of two years, while the rate of fine was increased from one thousand. A maximum of two lakhs and a minimum of one lakh have been made-
These crimes were not taken seriously and these crimes were declared as bailable provisions because in the Penal Code of Pakistan all crimes punishable up to three years are bailable.
Since in the UNICEF report, the scourge of child marriages was declared to be the highest in Sindh, the Sindh government drafted the Sindh Child Marriages Act 2013 at the provincial level in this regard, which was approved by the Sindh Assembly on April 28, 2014, And the Governor of Sindh on 10 June 2014 ratified it and promulgated it a provincial law.
This Act can actually be considered a copy of the Child Restraint Act at the national level, and it also contains the same penalties as those set out in the 2019 federal amendment-
And in it, the marriage of both men and women under the age of 18 has been declared a crime – in the Sindh Child Marriages Act, however, this crime has been declared cognizable, non-bailable – and also irreconcilable.
In light of Section 190 of the Code under this Act, no court other than a Court of First Class Judicial Magistrate shall proceed the case.
In violation of this act, i.e. if a marriage is going to take place below the prescribed age, the court will issue a stay order on the application and whoever violates this order will be imprisoned for one year separately and shall be liable to a fine-
When the court issues a notice in this matter, all the parties will be given the right to appear before the court in person or with their lawyer – and the court has been given time to conclude this process in 90 days and issue a decision –
In the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, a person who marries an underage girl is liable to three years imprisonment and a fine, if his facilitators i.e. the parents, even if they are the girl’s parents, the marriage registrar and other facilitators will also be given the same punishments if found guilty-
In the context of early marriage, poverty, illiteracy, social and cultural practices against human rights are its factors.
The implications of the prevalence of early marriage and the subsequent pregnancy of this young mother, ultimately affect the health of the adolescent girl. There is usually a lot of pressure on brides to bear children.
In developing countries, early pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young girls between the ages of 15 and 18.
There is a law against child marriage, but as long as the system of landlords, vadirs and chiefs continues in rural areas, there will be no one to report these crimes.
And even if the report is made from somewhere, it is the Jagirdars, Vaderes and Sardars who are present in the assemblies who make an example to those who challenge their writs in their respective areas but do not allow the implementation of the law.
This is the reason why till date no such notable case has come to light in which those responsible for child marriage have been really punished.
In our country too, such laws and amendments are made just to throw dust in the eyes of international organizations and developed countries and get foreign aid under this pretext and then digest them and they live only on paper, in practice don’t exist-