The Government of Punjab has approved the Child Marriage Restraint Bill 2026 with a majority vote. This comes 13 years after the Government of Sindh passed a similar law and a year after Balochistan and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the only province that has yet to show concern for the life, health, and future of its adolescent girls and girl children. It has had progressive laws that criminalised customs of Swara/Vani, Badal, Badal Sulha, Chatti, and Ghagg, which are reconciliatory mechanisms for settling disputes that use women and girls of all ages as peace collateral.
As per the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017–18, the last national and provincial dataset where KP and erstwhile FATA were quantified separately, it reported that 27% of women got married under the age of 18 years, and 6% under the age of 15 in KP. Whereas in FATA/NMDs, 35% reported being married under the age of 18 years and 8% under the age of 15.
The drivers of child marriage are multi-dimensional and have social, economic, political, and religious interplay. Poverty, patriarchal power structures, archaic socio-customary practices, and economic interests affect women and the girl child disproportionately. Child Marriage Restraint laws are a must to protect the best interests of the child as the primary right holder to life, and to transform society’s attitudinal preferences and practices that are harmful to a child’s life.
Saying #NoToChildMarriages is critical from two core lenses, i.e., ‘child’ and ‘marriage’. Traditionally, marriage is expected to have a role in the preservation of morals and societal values as a core component of a family setting, besides having mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities. Imagine a girl aged between 7 to 15 years—she barely, if at all, knows anything about her body, is struggling to understand menstruation and linked hormonal changes, and has no idea of what conjugal rights or sexual relations entail, as they are socially taboo topics.
This was aptly raised in the Punjab Assembly debate by the Information Minister, Azma Zahid Bokhari, when she stated that “many young girls are married without understanding the best interests of the child and, as a consequence, many of them die during childbirth.” National statistics (PDHS 2017–18) record that 32% of married adolescent girls report physical violence, and 31% face spousal abuse.
Alarmingly, 53% believe it is justified for a husband to beat his wife. In this context, Minister Azma Bokhari is right to question “why women should continue to bear the burden of social injustice.” She further contextualised that “when, under the law, a national identity card is considered mandatory for any contract, then laws related to life, health, and safety should also be treated as contractual matters.”
There is a global consensus that child marriage is a consequence of entrenched gender inequality that causes life-cycle discrimination, denial of rights, and loss of potential opportunities for a girl child
Saying #NoToChildMarriages is critical, as income and food poverty—a potent global driver of child marriage—deprioritises the girl child and impacts her access to health, education, and future opportunities. CM invariably results in teen pregnancies, often repeated with minimal birth spacing, which increases the risks of maternal mortality, obstetric fistulas, haemorrhages, and other pregnancy-related complications.
Children born to teen mothers are also at increased risk of premature birth and death as neonates, infants, or children, and lifelong nutritional deficiencies. An adolescent girl is neither physically nor mentally ready to cope with marital activity and linked responsibilities, thus leading to emotional stress and increased acceptance and justification of marital violence.
Therefore, the Punjab CMR Bill 2026 must be appreciated for making the best interests of the child the primary consideration in all actions under the law. It provides that no child may be treated as an offender merely for being a contracting party to a child marriage. The law further states that a child’s statement or purported consent vis-à-vis an adult contracting party shall not be determinative, especially when a child has been taken, enticed, coerced, or trafficked.
This is important in the context of forced religious conversions and child marriages, where a 16–18-year-old girl is abducted, forcibly converted, and married, and then, under duress, her statement is recorded and accepted that she married of her own will. The law states that voluntary consent of a person below 18 shall not, by itself, oust the protective jurisdiction of the court—a provision long sought by child rights advocates, who have highlighted how findings of “willing” consent often undermine trafficking, abduction, and prosecution.
While opposing the bill, Mr Samiullah Khan, the PML-N MPA from Lahore, stated that “Europe, which had moved away from the family system, is now returning to it. Marriage should not be viewed merely as a sexual act but as an institution that forms the foundation of family in Muslim culture.”
There are three key Islamic legal concepts: (i) Baligh (physical puberty); (ii) Aqil, meaning a sound mind with the ability to understand consequences; and (iii) Rushd, which includes judgement, responsibility, and independence and is at a higher standard than puberty. The Qur’an in Surah Noor, Talaq, and Nisa indicates that Baligh is not automatically equal to Aqil and Rushd. Hence, marriageability is contingent not merely on biological puberty (bulugh) but on demonstrable intellectual maturity (rushd).
The marriages contracted as child marriages are declared illegal, with punishment for contracting actors, yet the law does not declare them void. Therefore, a girl child remains married and needs to file khula or divorce to end it. This becomes more complicated in cases of forced abduction, conversion, and child marriages. However, the proposal to allow courts to declare void a marriage consummated after the abduction of an underage child was not adopted.
Imagine a girl child, aged 7–16, having no voice and/or agency to stop her child marriage, is expected to file for divorce. Pakistan’s child marriage laws increasingly criminalise underage unions, but by failing to invalidate the marriage itself and separating coercion from age protections, they reproduce a legal structure that disciplines the act without dismantling the patriarchal institution behind it.
There is a global consensus that child marriage is a consequence of entrenched gender inequality that causes life-cycle discrimination, denial of rights, and loss of potential opportunities for a girl child. Education is a powerful shield against child marriage. Ensuring that girls stay in school is one of the most effective ways to delay marriage and improve their chances of leading healthier, more empowered lives.
Pakistan’s Constitution guarantees the fundamental right to life and education. These rights must be reflected not only in laws and policies but in how society values and protects its children—especially girls. Raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 is a step towards ensuring that every girl has the chance to live a life of dignity, free from violence, and full of opportunity.