WUNRN
PAKISTAN - PROPOSED LAW TO INCREASE
PENALTY FOR INVOLVEMENT IN CHILD MARRIAGE - DIVISIVE & UNDER DEBATE
By
Wajahat S. Khan
A
Pakistani
girl Saneeda, who escaped a forced marriage, tells her story to a journalist in
December 2013.Getty Images
At the moment, females can legally tie the knot at 16
while males must wait until they are 18. However, it is customary for younger
teen girls to be married by their families in some parts of the country. Girls
are also sometimes offered as compensation to end feuds between families.
Anyone involved in underage wedlock currently faces a $10
fine, possibly accompanied by up to a month in jail. But lawmaker Marvi Memon
is fighting for this to be increased to $1,000 - which is about a month's wage
for a recent graduate working at a bank -- and a possible jail sentence of two years.
"These girls are being treated as cattle,"
Memon told NBC News. "They are dying. We cannot have little girls being
married off at 15 and 16 and being forced to produce kids. It doesn’t make
sense medically, and it doesn’t make sense economically."
According to UNICEF's State of the World's Children Report 2014,
seven percent of Pakistani girls are married under the age of 15.
“Our prime objective is to ensure that our women are
productive members of society,” Memon added. “For that to happen the injustices
that are meted out to these child brides have to be curbed.”
Her bill in the country's National Assembly has been met
with fierce opposition from
Memon's battle has been dubbed by some as "Marvi vs.
Mullahs" and #mullahsvsmarvi trended briefly on Twitter, a rare religious
debate on the country's social-media scene.
Arguing that even the current laws forbidding child
marriage contradict the Koran, the influential chair of the Council of Islamic
Ideology (CII) has spoken out against the proposals.
Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani believes that parliament
could not legislate laws which are against the teachings of the Quran. He did
not return repeated calls seeking comment from NBC News.
Gibran Peshimam, the political editor of
“The CII’s edicts may not be legally binding, strictly
speaking, but they have enough value to affect legislation," he said.
“Basically, the CII is meant to interpret laws and legislation by done by
parliament to ensure that the basic provision in
Under Islamic tradition, any person is free to marry
after reaching puberty, according to Werner Menski, a professor of South Asian
laws at SOAS,
University of London.
After the Islamic contract of marriage has been agreed
upon and a dowry paid, if the bride consents to marriage the argument has
traditionally been that God has heard the offer. That makes it binding under
Islamic law and sex would be permitted, Menski added.
"They are not physically and mentally ready"
Once married, young girls can become isolated and they
are often forced into early sex, according to Ann Warner, a senior gender and
youth specialist at the International Center for Research on Women.
“This leads to early pregnancy and very high risk
pregnancy,” she said. “Younger girls are at a much higher risk of death and
disability during pregnancy and their children are also at much higher risk of
not surviving and dying as young children."
Warner said that early marriage "has an extremely
negative impact on their lives."
She added: “They are not physically and mentally ready.
They are almost always pulled out of school so their potential for education is
cut off and with that, their potential to work and contribute to their
societies both economically and socially.”
Marilyn Crawshaw, who is involved with a non-governmental
organization that works with women in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of
“If you children as some sort of bargaining chip or
commodity that has a value attached to it, that is always bad for them,"
said Crawshaw, who is chairwoman of the UK Friends of Khwendo Kor. "The price
is paid by the child."
Memon, who launched the bill, says she plans to turn the
tables on clerics opposing the tougher penalties by using Islamic doctrine to
justify it.
“Islam is the religion which is the most progressive for
women,” she said. “We are looking forward to the committee hearing where we
will give Islamic arguments and data from Islamic countries to prove that the
amendments we are suggesting are Islamic, democratic and progressive.”