The recent baby marriages of two minor girls, Raveena and Reena, from the Hindu community in Sindh have drawn attention of the USA to two systemic human rights violations – infant marriages and the oppression of religious minorities. The girls’ family claims that the 2 sisters are elderly, sixteen and 14, even though that is disputed. Due to the fees of forcible conversion, their tale has prompted a country-wide outcry to return the ladies to their dad and mom and take broader measures to deal with forced conversion and marriage of juvenile women.
Raveena and Reena’s instances illustrate the urgent need for comprehensive reform to Pakistan’s legal framework regarding infant marriage and adolescent rights. The response from legislators continues to be narrowly centered on piecemeal adjustments instead of seeing the broader context of infant marriage in Pakistan, which, according to UNICEF, ranks 6th in the world in terms of the very best absolute numbers of child marriage.
On March 27, a member of the National Assembly belonging to the ruling political party moved an invoice to amend the federal child marriage legislation, the 1929 Child Marriage Restraint Act. While the bill proposes a nice step to raise the age of marriage to 18 for ladies, it specializes in stronger punishments for mothers and fathers or adult males involved in child marriage without any discussion of the rights and remedies of women themselves.
The flurry of proposed measures and laws does not fully cope with the range of gaps and loopholes in the current toddler marriage legal guidelines. A file through the Center for Reproductive Rights, ‘Ending Impunity for Child Marriage in Pakistan,’ analyzing the gaps inside the legal framework on child marriage in Pakistan, highlights the subsequent most important weaknesses:
(1) silence in toddler marriage regulation regarding whether infant marriages are void or voidable; (2) a lack of readability regarding the connection between infant marriage rules and inconsistent personal legal guidelines concerning the minimum age of marriage; and (3) absence of criminal safeguards for the safety and welfare of women.
The weaknesses inside the cutting-edge criminal framework are obvious. At the same time, we see that the prevailing legal guidelines no longer cope with the case of Raveena and Reena in a way that prioritizes their rights and pursuits. Moreover, their scenario is made extra complex by the reality that both women have publicly stated that they’ve selected to marry of their own loose will, and filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court seeking protection from harassment by the government and their families.
