EDITORIAL: At a recent workshop on “ Sexual and Reproductive Health and child marriages: Challenges and the Way Forward” jointly hosted by an NGO, Potohar Organisation for Development Advocacy, and District Population Welfare Office in Rawalpindi, participants from diverse fields passed a resolution calling for linking girls’ minimum marriage age to national identity cards across the country.
At face value it is a pretty good suggestion, but the way forward is not so easy. First of all is the issue of legal disparity.
Although both genders have the right to vote, obtain driving licence, and seek recruitment in the armed forces at 18 years of age, when it comes to the life changing event of marriage the provinces have different standards. In Sindh, for instance, the legal age for both boys and girls is 18 years — the law though is rarely enforced — in the largest population province, Punjab, it is 16 years.
At play, however, are multiple factors. In the relatively prosperous urban areas, where girls have better educational facilities as well as job opportunities they usually are married in their early or mid-20s. But girls-child marriages are widespread in rural areas because of regressive social norms, lack of education, and poverty, exacerbated by climate change induced natural disasters, like the unprecedented floods that hit vast swathes of rural Sindh in 2022, and continue to affect people’s lives.
Desperate to make ends meet poor families have been marrying off so many underage girls to older men in exchange for money that a freshly minted term describes them as ‘monsoon child brides’. Driven into early wedlock they are physically and emotionally unprepared, and also lack knowledge about reproductive health.
Pregnancies in their immature bodies often result in miscarriages with a heightened risk of maternal and child mortality. Compared to girls who marry at the right time they are also more prone to suffer spousal violence, causing them both physical and mental traumas. The practice is an anathema to civilised sensibilities. The challenge is how to stop it.
Notwithstanding the resource constrains federal and provincial governments face at present, poverty alleviation should figure prominently at least in their long-term agendas for socio-economic development. In the meantime, there is a lot they can and should do to protect girls from being pushed into underage marriages.
First and foremost, all provinces must have uniform laws fixing marriage age for both boys and girls at 18 years, backed by proper mechanisms to ensure compliance. Second, if not more importantly, access to education ought to be improved along with incentives for parents.
In many rural districts of Punjab girls already are offered stipends double the amount for boys, encouraging poor families to send them to school. The other provinces should follow suit. Inarguably, decent educational opportunities lead to delayed marriages and fewer births that this country badly needs to control the population explosion.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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