Legalizing consent for women in Pakistan

When is a girl old enough to marry? In Pakistan there is no one answer to this important question upon which depends the welfare of the country’s 40 million girls aged between 15 and 24 years, or nearly 20 per cent of the country’s 207 million population, according to the last census in 2017.

The current federal law and three out of four of Pakistani provinces allow marriages for girls at 16 while the southern Sindh province fixed the minimum age more progressively at 18 in 2013. A bill was passed by the Senate in 2018 seeking to enhance the minimum age to 18. It hasn’t still been passed by the National Assembly, effectively keeping 16 as the minimum legal age for girls. Unless passed by both houses of parliament, a law cannot take effect.

According to UNICEF, 21 per cent of Pakistani girls are married off at 18 and three per cent before 15. This is despite the fact that the prevalent Child Marriages Restraint Act bans marriages of girls before they turn 16. The legal deterrence for marrying a minor – below 16 – is too low for prevention: a one-thousand rupee fine, or less than US$5!

More complicated is the fact that under Pakistan’s law, legal adulthood is set at age 18 when citizens become eligible for a national identity card, registration as a voter and obtain a driver’s license. Technically, you are considered a child before 18 but eligible to be married off at 16 without obtaining a national identity card which is mandatory for marriage!

That is not all. At the social level, the deeply conservative society often frowns upon free will marriages, especially of girls without guardians. They are old enough to be married off but not old enough to decide when and whom to marry. Over the past few years, the Aurat March, an annual outpouring of social solidarity around women’s rights has been rocked with controversy due to its iconic battle cry of “Mera Jism, Meri Marzi [My Body, My Right].”

The fierce movement for the right of girls to delay marriage and choose their own partners is at the heart of the overall movement for social reforms that has been shaping political agendas and fueling confrontation between conservatist, religious sections of society and the upwardly mobile middle classes seeking greater political and economic opportunities to free themselves of stifling conservatism.

Some of the momentum built up by the women’s rights movement is starting to deliver politico-legal dividends. The Islamabad High Court this month ruled that the minimum legal age for marriage of girls will be 18 years, not below. In a country where even child marriages are not uncommon, this verdict has the potential to change the lives of young women for the better

Adnan Rehmat

The confrontation has helped raise the issue of women’s rights in general and the issue of underage marriage and social pressures on girls for early marriages, especially. Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) and Federal Shariat Court (FSC), established by military dictator General Ziaul Haq in the early 1980s to enforce his vision of an Islamic society in a then generally secular Pakistan, have traditionally been obsessed with suppressing rights of women and minorities.

The CII, for instance, ruled in 2015 that girls can simply be married off upon reaching puberty, even if it is at 13, and opposing a legal minimum age for them. The FSC in 2021, however, threw out a legal challenge to an attempt by parliament to set the minimum age at 18 by waiving off the current legal age of 16, saying Islam does not oppose a legal minimum age.

However, being given the supposed relief of not losing the minimum age of 16 for marriage is not enough for Pakistani girls. Only one in four girls manages to clear high school for a college education. The other three face the stifling prospects of forced early careers as homemakers. Through Aurat March, they have been demanding more time to grow up and pursue their education before any considerations of marriage.

Some of the momentum built up by the women’s rights movement is starting to deliver politico-legal dividends. The Islamabad High Court this month ruled that the minimum legal age for marriage of girls will be 18 years, not below. In a country where even child marriages are not uncommon, this verdict has the potential to change the lives of young women for the better.

The court ruling provides for an opportunity for Pakistan to legalize consent and standardize marriage ages in sync with the fundamental rights of girls on physical and emotional welfare. At a minimum, Pakistan must equate the minimum age of marriage for girls with the age of legal adulthood. And preferably, girls must be given their inalienable human rights to decide their own partners and when to marry them, if at all.

- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.

Twitter: @adnanrehmat1