President gives his assent to ‘The Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024’

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari assented to “The Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024,” increasing the minimum marriage age limit for members of the Christian faith from 13 and 16 to 18 years.

According to clause 2 of the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2024, in the Christian Marriage Act, 1872, “for the word “sixteen” the word, “eighteen” shall be substituted; and for the word “thirteen” the word, “eighteen”, shall be substituted.

President Zardari has signed into law the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2024, during a special ceremony, held at Aiwan-e-Sadr, on Tuesday. The Act provides for raising the marriageable age for Christian men and women to 18 years.

Addressing the signing ceremony in Islamabad this afternoon, he also called for enhancing job quotas for minorities in every government department. He said minorities have equal rights as every other Pakistani has.

The President called for further enhancing the employment quota for minorities in all government jobs, saying that he would write to the government in this regard. He said that all minorities were equal citizens of the state having equal rights. He highlighted that minorities should not be disheartened by some isolated incidents, saying that they had equal ownership over the homeland as much as anybody else.

He accorded assent to the Act under Article 75 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The ceremony was attended by the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs and Inter-Faith Harmony (MORA), Chaudhry Salik Hussain, Secretary MORA, Zulfiquar Haider, members of the Christian community and senior government officials.

Speaking on the occasion, Bishop Abraham Daniel said that raising the age of marriage for men and women had been a long-standing demand of the Christian community. He expressed his gratitude to the President for signing the Act into law during a special ceremony. He also thanked President Zardari for his role in his previous tenure in reserving a five percent quota for minorities in government jobs, besides allocating special seats for minorities in the Senate as well as declaring 11th August as Minorities’ Day in Pakistan.

Secretary MORA Zulfiquar Haider said that the government was committed to safeguarding the rights of minorities in accordance with the Constitution of Pakistan, and the vision and values of the country’s founding fathers.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024