Dispatches: Protecting Pakistan’s Girls Isn’t ‘Blasphemy’
Heather Barr
Senior Researcher, Women's Rights Division A female member of Pakistan’s parliament recently introduced
legislation to set the minimum age for marriage at 18 for women as well
as men. Under current Pakistani law, it’s 16 for women. On January 14,
her proposal was withdrawn
by a parliamentary committee after the Council of Islamic Ideology, a
body established in 1962 to advise the parliament on Islamic law,
denounced the change as "anti-Islamic" and "blasphemous."
This decision keeps Pakistan on the wrong side of human rights
protections in the Islamic world. Change is happening on child marriage,
including in countries that, like Pakistan, are committed to upholding
Islamic values. In 2009, Afghanistan, an Islamic republic, set tough new
penalties for child marriage. The prime minister of Bangladesh, another
majority Muslim country, has pledged to end all child marriage by 2041.
Twenty-one percent of girls in Pakistan marry before age 18. Globally, 700 million women alive today married before they were 18, and almost half of all child brides live in South Asia.
Child marriage in Pakistan and elsewhere has devastating
consequences. Married girls typically stop going to school. They give
birth early and frequently, and both they and their babies often suffer
serious health consequences, including fistula, uterine prolapse, and
low birth weight. Married girls are more likely to become victims of
domestic violence than women who marry later. Child marriage helps to
hold families in poverty.
