PESHAWAR: The civil society organisations here have expressed disappointment over the National Assembly Standing Committee on Religious Affairs’ rejecting a proposal to raise the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 years, the same as that for boys.

In this connection, Blue Veins with the support of Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) organised a stakeholders consultation in Peshawar on Tuesday to review the latest provincial drafts of Child Marriage Restraint Bill 2016 and develop an amended ‘pro-girls and women marriage restraint act draft’ to be presented in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

Qamar Naseem of Blue Veins, Mufti Rahimdad, Child Rights Movement Fata coordinator Zar Ali Khan, Pakhtunkhwa Civil Society Network coordinator Taimur Kamal and Human Rights Khyber Pakhtunkhwa director Noor Zaman Khattak shared views on the issue. They expressed concern over rejection of the proposal by the NA committee for raising the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 years after several committee members declared such a change un-Islamic.

Shows concern over rejection of proposal to hike marriage age for girls to 18 years

It was discussed that Pakistan was a signatory to The Khartoum Declaration, Cairo Declaration on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Islamic Jurisprudence, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, etc which required Pakistan to make concrete efforts to end child marriages.

About the event, Mr Naseem said that the consultation was aimed at reducing ideological conflict among the stakeholders on the draft of the bill and improving the existing draft before it is presented in KP Assembly.

Mr Naseem, the focal person of the Provincial Alliance to end Child Marriages in KP/Fata, regretted that the standing committee members quietly surrendered to the diktat of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII).

“It seems that the Quaid-i-Azam’s struggle to have minimum age of marriage prescribed for Muslim girls through the 1929 law has no relevance to all those who claim to have inherited his ideology,” he added.

Mr Zar Ali said that the comments by CII calling child marriage restraint law “un-Islamic” did not reflect progress in Pakistan. Khushnuma advocate said that Sindh increased the age of marriage to 18 for girls in 2013 and Punjab tightened punishment against child marriages in 2015 so the centre should fulfil its duty to end child marriages.

Mr Kamal said that practices in relation to child marriages have to change. “Islam does not encourage child marriages,” said Mufti Rahimdad, adding that there should be a relaxation that when there was a need to perform such a marriage it should not be stopped by the law. He said that in the current draft of the bill it should be mentioned that such a marriage could be performed with the permission of court.

Mr Khattak said that the KP government was committed to bringing forward rights-based legislations. He said that proposals of civil society would be forwarded to the relevant departments.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2016