Domestic violence in Pakistan is a household issue and is acknowledged in legislation. What it lacks is enforcement. The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2026 is the most recent attempt to fill that gap. It has the architecture of a good statute – it is federal and ambitious.
The real question is not what the Act says but whether the Act can do what it says. Domestic violence is not a legal problem; rather, it is a structural one that persists in society due to economic dependency, social hierarchy, and the indifference of the state, which has treated the home as beyond its reach. Legislation enters that space at a disadvantage and does not arrive on neutral ground.
The 2026 Act is a federal enactment. This is because any previous legislative efforts were primarily made at the provincial level. They were uneven, fragmented, and easily ignored. The 2026 Act changes the dynamics. It now defines domestic violence as physical, psychological, and even economic abuse, as well as any act that puts a person in reasonable apprehension of harm. The definition in the Act acknowledges coercive control, not just visible injury.
The mechanism has been structured around protection orders that an aggrieved person, or an officer on their behalf, may seek from a magistrate. The Act establishes Domestic Violence Courts, designates Protection Officers at the district level, and provides a range of remedies, including residence orders, monetary relief, and custody arrangements.
The Act does not enter a legal vacuum. Articles 9 and 14 of the Constitution of Pakistan guarantee the rights to life and dignity, while Article 25 enshrines equality before the law and prohibits discrimination based on sex. These provisions are not merely aspirational. The superior courts have interpreted them to impose a positive obligation on the state to protect individuals from violence – including violence perpetrated by people within the home.
Most relevant to this Act is the Supreme Court’s judgment of October 2025, authored by Justice Ayesha A. Malik and reported in The Express Tribune under the headline, ‘Psychological abuse is a ground for divorce: SC’. The Court held that cruelty within marriage includes psychological and emotional abuse alongside physical abuse.
It rejected the family court’s insistence on medical or documentary evidence, stating that ‘abuse within the marital home is often a bedroom crime, committed in private, for which there are no witnesses’. This recognition that harm is real without being visible is the logic on which the 2026 Act’s definition of psychological abuse must now operate.
The 2026 Act will protect women most securely in text while leaving them precarious in practice
Every student of Pakistani law understands the gap between legislative text and lived enforcement. The 2026 Act’s success depends on the functioning of a network of Protection Officers, sensitised magistrates, and accessible courts; each of these preconditions is itself deeply uncertain.
The evidence is unambiguous. Data compiled by the Sustainable Social Development Organisation reveals that in Sindh alone, not a single conviction was secured, even though there were 204 documented domestic violence cases in the first half of 2025 and 98 challans submitted in court.
Zero convictions.
That figure is not a footnote but an enforcement crisis that the 2026 Act must overcome.
The Act designates Protection Officers at the district level but is largely silent on their qualifications, training standards, and accountability mechanisms. In a country where even an FIR in violence-related cases is often resisted, expecting Protection Officers to advocate effectively requires a degree of institutional will that no statute can generate on its own.
One question stands at the core of the issue, particularly in the context of property relinquishment: when is consent truly voluntary?
The Act envisions a complainant who approaches a Protection Officer or a court. However, in the Pakistani domestic context, this act of complaint carries enormous social and familial costs. Women who report domestic violence risk not only abandonment but also ostracism, economic destitution, and even the loss of custody of their children.
However, the complaint-driven model of the 2026 Act places the entire burden of initiation on the structurally disadvantaged party. As Justice Malik observed in her October 2025 judgment, abuse frequently remains unreported due to ‘socio-cultural barriers, economic dependency and lack of information’.
A model that ignores these realities cannot claim to address them.
The Act’s expansive definitions – its greatest strength in principle – carry risks in practice. Psychological and economic abuse are concepts that require careful adjudication. Without judicial training and clear standards, broad definitions can paradoxically undermine enforcement by creating space for contested, drawn-out litigation. Respondents with legal counsel may exploit definitional ambiguity to exhaust complainants.
The October 2025 Supreme Court judgment is instructive precisely because it also exposes this risk. The Court needed to clarify that psychological abuse does not require documentary evidence. This clarification was required at the Supreme Court level, reversing a Peshawar High Court decision that had dismissed a woman’s claim for want of medical proof. The 2026 Act must be accompanied by detailed procedural rules and mandatory judicial training because, without them, trial courts will default to the narrowest interpretations.
The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2026 is a significant legislative achievement. It signals federal recognition that domestic violence is a public wrong demanding a structured state response. Its definitional breadth and constitutional grounding represent a meaningful step forward.
However, Pakistani legal history offers a sobering lesson: legislation that outpaces institutional capacity tends to remain aspirational.
Zero convictions in Sindh in 2025.
The Supreme Court was forced to clarify that abuse need not leave visible marks.
Provincial Acts largely unenforced.
The 2026 Act inherits this landscape.
Real protection requires three things: adequately resourced Protection Officers with clear accountability mechanisms; mandatory sensitisation training for magistrates; and genuine partnership with civil society organisations that carry much of the burden of responding to domestic violence in Pakistan.
The irony is familiar.
The same system designed to protect women can, through procedural formalism and institutional inertia, become another arena in which their structural disadvantage plays out.
Until this changes, the 2026 Act will protect women most securely in text while leaving them precarious in practice.
Precarious in practice is precisely where Pakistani women have remained for far too long.