Girls are more affected due to child marriage but boys are also counted among the victims
newssoye web desk
13 hours ago
Laughter, happiness, jumping, childhood, innocence, carelessness, colors. What a great injustice to take away all this at once. Perhaps it is such a serious act that it cannot be remedied in any case. One such heinous act is "child marriage".
Kainat was born into a poor family, her father Arshad is a financial officer in a government school. He is not very educated. The desire for a son filled his wife's lap with 5 daughters. Kainat is the youngest of the sisters. When she turned 13, she was very happy when she passed from the seventh standard to the eighth
She always thought of one thing that she will study with all her heart. She will become a doctor after getting a higher education and will make her parents so easy that they will forget all the sorrows of life. "I wanted to show my father as a son." The tearful universe revealed its innocent desire.
Shakeel used to work in a factory in Lahore. This 26-year-old young man was financially less stable than Kainat's family. When Shakil's house got a relationship for Kainat, her father was not happy because he thought he would get his daughter married soon.
The happiness that she could not get at her father's house will surely be found in her in-laws' house. The next month, Kainat got married to Shakeel.
Kainat is not happy to get married but when her mother Ezra Begum tells her that getting married will get her a lot of work shoes, new shoes, make-up,p and jewelry, she agrees because she loves to be. beautiful.
After a few days of marriage, he felt that all the things that his mother had told him were far from the truth. She was no longer a 13-year-old naughty girl but had become the elder daughter-in-law of Fazal Karim's house, and the custom was that "now the elder daughter-in-law has arrived, she will take care of the whole house".
With each passing day, the health of the universe was deteriorating. Meanwhile, one day while arguing, Shakeel tortured the universe. This situation was also new to him.
According to Kainat, she has been married for a year and a half now and has a four-month-old daughter in her womb who is often sick. Kainat herself was a dying child during the birth of her daughter.
During this time, he was tortured several times by Shakeel. Once, after being beaten, she left Lahore for Wahari by herself. Neither the knowledge of the roads nor the address of the vehicle, but she wandered and finally reached home.
Kainat, her father, mother,r, and sisters are all worried about her condition. When she returned to Mackay last month after enduring torture, Shakeel did not call or pick her up.
No one told the government about Kainat's marriage. When a couple of people from the village tried to inform the police, Arshad put his dastar at their feet and apologized saying that 70 thousand rupees for his daughter's marriage. I have taken a loan and made all the arrangements. If the police come, I will not be anywhere. After that, the entire village remained a silent spectator.
Twenty such incidents happen around us, but we remain silent. Either we don't know that child marriage is a crime or we "dishonor" those living in wasabi
This is the reason that only 3 cases have been registered since 2019 regarding child marriage. Out of which 2 cases were registered in 2019 and 1 case was registered in 2021
According to the information obtained through RTI, on August 4, 2019, 10-year-old Sakina Bibi daughter of Shamsher Ali was married to 47-year-old Shahbaz Shah in Basti Reet Colony of Mauza Ghlo under Metro Police Station, but the police reached the spot. The father of the bride and the groom were arrested.
Since then, the case has been pending in court and is yet to conclude. Plaintiff police officer Abdul Ghaffar said that the father of the bride had to pay the debt of 70 thousand rupees to the father of the groom, but he did not have the resources. Unwillingly, he supported his daughter's marriage.
Renowned jurist Sardar Maswar Abbas Baloch says that the law on child marriage states that only the secretary of the union council can be a plaintiff in the case, which is the reason why the above case is still pending and the accused may be charged more. benefit and they become evil.
He said that there are many flaws in the act, the biggest flaw is the fixed age of a girl is 16 years, but it is a very difficult process to prove. If the fixed age is fixed at 18 years by amendment and the identity card of the boy and girl is made mandatory for marriage, such incidents can be reduced.
Social leader Yasmin Fatima says that the biggest loss in early marriage is the girl child, her basic human rights are usurped, her freedom is put at stake, and her education is stopped, which not only her not able to become a good person, but later she is not able to become a good wife and a good mother.
Apart from this, the health of the girl child is adversely affected as she would not have been able to get an education and therefore cannot raise the children well, which may result in a high incidence of child labor and an increase in the divorce rate. Is.
As the age difference between boys and girl is different, they do not understand each other better, the result is that the incidence of domestic violence increases. Cases keep coming.
Mahar Sher Bahadur Lak, former president of the Wahari Bar Association, and senior jurist says that 3 aspects are very important to prevent child marriage. To be delivered. Second, serious efforts should be made to find out its causes and overcome them, and thirdly, the implementation of the law should be made more effective.
Meher Sher Bahadur Lak says that under the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, child marriage was considered such a serious offense that a fine of Rs 1,000 was imposed during that period, which is roughly Rs 1 crore in today's currency. But over time, the seriousness of this crime decreased.
In this regard, the best legislation has been made in Sindh so far, but the implementation of this law in other provinces could not be made easy.
According to the Punjab Child Marriage Act, a girl should be 16 years old and a boy 18 years old at the time of marriage.
The biggest loophole in this law is that when the government does not issue a national identity card at the age of 16, a driving license cannot be issued to people of that age, and a 16-year-old boy or girl cannot exercise the right to vote. If the law does not allow any type of contract at age, then how can a girl get married at 16 years?
This law should be changed immediately and the minimum age of a girl for marriage should be 18 years. The state has to play a role in enforcing this law because according to the law if the secretary of the union council makes a request, it is legal. Proceedings take place and other persons may also become plaintiffs but it may benefit the accused.
Educationist Dr. Asif Shahzad says that early marriage not only makes the future of a girl dark but also affects her future generation because she is not able to get an education and therefore is not able to raise her well. It is also a major cause of gender disparity in society as 95% of girls and 5% of boys are affected by cases of early marriage in Pakistan.
According to Asif Shehzad, one of the main reasons for early marriage is the ancient practice of metadata, in which the brother of a girl who marries a boy is married to the boy's sister, mainly to keep the relationship strong and long. It is meant to be carried on for a long time, but this process completely ignores whether the age of the other boy or girl is suitable for marriage or not.
Niger has the highest child marriage rate in the world at 75%, with 36% of girls under the age of 15, while the second highest rate is Chad, with 68% of girls married at the age of 15. Girls are 29 percent, the rate of child marriage in Pakistan is 3.18 percent, in which girls under 15 years of age are 6.3 percent.
There are 6 countries in the world where there is no minimum age for marriage, they include Guinea, Gambia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Suda,n and Yemen.
Sindh has the highest rate of child marriage in Pakistan. According to the UNICEF report in Sindh, the number of girls married below 18 years of age was 22 percent in 2018.
Gender specialist Saima Ali says that our society does not have a tradition of training children under the age of 18 in such a way that they can understand a serious matter like marriage, but it is also important in our society that the first marriage should be done before the age of 25. be done
She says that her mate married her 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter but did not leave. So she is doing this duty so that the relationship is fixed but will leave only when they are more than 20 years old.
Saima Ali says that it is a positive aspect of early marriage in a society where poor and low-income families perform the obligation of Nikah at the age of 11 to 15 to avoid possible problems but leave at a fixed age. Do it later. Such people in society are also found to be guilty of violating the law of minors due to marriage. This point also needs to be understood.
Social activist Luqman Majeed says that when we talk about child marriage in general, our focus is on the girl. It is a fact that girl is more affected due to child marriage, but boys are also counted among the victim.
Because when a 12- or 14-year-old boy is married off, he also does not understand the situation in a better way. This situation becomes more difficult for the boys from the underprivileged family when they are worried about employment at the age of playing and due to the seriousness of the situation, they end up taking the path of suicide.
Child marriage is a serious social problem that can be reduced through various measures including awareness, effective implementation of the law, counseling of parents, highlighting the importance of education, and considering such incidents as a moral obligation. Includes reporting, and advocacy in rural and urban areas.
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