In June 2025, Pakistan ranked last among 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report, with 56.7 per cent gender parity. The issue of violence and infringement of rights on the basis of gender is not new for Pakistan.
After independence, Pakistan and India had to deal with abduction, forced conversion and forced marriages of girls, leading to the signing of the historic Liaquat-Nehru Pact, on 8th April 1950, to protect the refugees crossing the borders, even before the 1951 Refugee Convention.
This agreement dealt with returning looted property and abducted women; prohibiting forced conversion; protecting religious minorities; appointing special courts; and setting up an agency with representation from minority communities. But the abductions, forced conversions and child marriages are still rampant.
Besides armed conflicts and poverty, environmental calamities also cause child marriages and child brides. In 2024, child marriages reportedly increased in 2022 flood-affected areas of Pakistan, due to climate-driven economic insecurities.
Child marriages are connected with other offences, because a girl is first abducted and then forcefully married; or forcefully converted and then forcefully married; or can be trafficked; or her organs can be trafficked; or she can be trafficked into forced prostitution. Therefore, whenever a court validates a child marriage, it complices the crimes of bonded labour, organ trafficking, child labour, child soldiering, sexual slavery, human trafficking and forced conversion.
By declaring a legal age of marriage, minor girls can be protected from exploitation for their age, gender, socioeconomic status, or religion, because child and forced marriages are the root of many evils, if not all
The Prosecutor vs. Brima, Kamara and Kanu (AFRC case), before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, was the first-ever conviction, upheld on appeal, for using child soldiers and developed the jurisprudence on forced marriages, sexual slavery and joint criminal enterprise.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) validated marriages of girls under age 16 in Mst. Bakhshi v. Bashir Ahmad (PLD 1970 SC 323). In 2020, the High Court of Sindh validated the marriage of a minor Christian girl, Huma, age 14, with her abductor. However, the Islamabad High Court, in Mumtaz Bibi v. Qasim (PLD 2022 Islamabad 228) declared that the marriage of girls younger than 18 years is invalid, as Pakistan has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The SCP, in SMC No.1/2014, upheld the constitutional safeguards and rights of minorities, but without declaring forced conversions and subsequent child marriages as illegal. Instead, it held that Hindu girls had eloped with men of their choice.
Besides various UN General Assembly resolutions, the issue of child and forced marriages has been addressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Convention on the Rights of the Child; International Conference on Population and Development; the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women; Beijing Platform for Action; the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; and most importantly the UN Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages.
Nationwide protests were called against the recent Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2025, which has prohibited the marriage of children under the age of 18 years. The law has now been challenged before the Federal Shariat Court.
The age of 18 years for marriage is already provided under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2013, which was challenged before the High Court of Sindh in Ali Azhar v. Arzoo Fatima (PLD 2022 Sindh 1), but was dismissed for being barred under Article 203-G of the 1973 Constitution, which deals with the Federal Shariat Court’s exclusive jurisdiction.
This case then reached the Federal Shariat Court under the title Ali Azhar v. Province of Sindh (PLD 2023 Federal Shariat Court 265), and was dismissed in limine for being misconceived.
The Court held that fixing an age limit to enter into marriage by the State or government is not against the injunctions of Islam. It further held that the act of setting a minimum age limit for marriage and setting the age for an adult eligible to solemnise marriage vide Section 2(a) of the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, is not against the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.
The Federal Shariat Court’s verdict is binding, and the present case against the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2025, should be dismissed. Otherwise, it will have dire consequences, especially for women and girls belonging to religious minority communities.
Thus, by declaring a legal age of marriage, minor girls can be protected from exploitation for their age, gender, socioeconomic status, or religion, because child and forced marriages are the root of many evils, if not all.