Well done Sindh Assembly!

Setting an age limit on marriages is a step in the right direction in ensuring the rights of young people.

Sindh has blazed a trail that other provinces may feel impelled to follow. On April 28, its provincial assembly passed the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013, criminalising marriage below the age of 18. This represents a triumph for civil society which had been venting its anguish at the trend in some segments of society to marry off girls at a very young age. There was also the recent controversy sparked by the Council of Islamic Ideology, which had given a recommendation saying that there was no bar on child marriages and that girls could be married off if they had attained puberty.



The new law stipulates that if an underage marriage is solemnised, the parents, bride and groom can all be jailed for three years and made to pay Rs45,000 in fine. This should serve as ample deterrence against the tendency among families to have their offspring tie the knot at an early stage, often against their will. It also overrides an old piece of legislation called Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, which takes a lenient view of the offence and awards a mere three-month maximum imprisonment and Rs1,000 in fine.

According to a senior official, a bill introduced in 1929 had fixed the age of a girl for marriage at 14 years until an amendment in 1965 raised it to 16. The new law passed by the Sindh Assembly considers 18 as the minimum age at which boys and girls can contract marriage. Below this threshold, they will be running afoul with the law. We also hope that the new law will help curtail the practice of exchanging young girls in marriage to settle past debts, which is a common practice in dispute resolution.

Given the complications that child marriages are thought to produce, and in order to uphold the rights of young people whose wishes are often suppressed and ignored, we think that setting an age limit on marriages is a step in the right direction. Those who have tirelessly pursued the matter in the provincial assembly and worked right from the drafting of the bill to its passage deserve all the plaudits.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2014.

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