PESHAWAR, Sept 10: The custom of Swara and child marriages are being practiced in the federally and provincially administered tribal areas, owing to the government’s failure to enforce laws banning these mediaeval customs to the region.

Talking to Dawn, legal experts and social activists regretted that neither the president had extended the much needed laws to Fata nor the NWFP governor to Pata (Provincially Administered tribal Areas).

Through the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2005 (Act No 1 of 2005), the federal government has made handing over girls to rival groups for settling disputes a penal offence. Section 310-A was inserted in the Pakistan Penal Code which provides for imprisonment for up to ten years for the offence of giving females in badl-i-sulh.

The Act appeared in the official gazette on Jan 11, 2005, but it has not been extended to tribal areas yet. The Act had been passed by parliament for checking honour-related killings, misuse of hudood and blasphemy laws by police and checking the customs of swara and vani.

The Child Marriage Restraint Act was introduced by the colonial rulers in 1929, but this law is also not applicable to Fata and Pata. Under the Act, a male below the age of 18 is considered a child and a female is a child if she is under 14. The law provides for imprisonment and fine for a person who contracts a child marriage.

“The laws prevalent in the rest of the country are not applicable to Fata and Pata under article 247 of the Constitution unless the president and the governor, respectively, issue notifications extending the law to these areas,” said Jehanzeb Khan, coordinator of the Society for the Protection of Rights of the Child, an NGO.

Seven out of 24 districts of the NWFP are situated in Pata: Upper and Lower Dir, Swat, Chitral, Buner, Shangla and Malakand.

Similarly, there are seven tribal agencies and six Frontier Regions in Fata.

The cases of swara and child marriages are rampant in tribal areas as compared to the settled districts of the province.

Last month, the high court granted bail to five people, including a prayer leader, who were charged with handing over a three-month-old baby girl in swara to the rival family.

The most prominent judgment of the high court in such cases was delivered on Nov 29, 2000, which termed the custom inhuman and un-Islamic.

In yet another case, a two-member bench had allowed a writ petition on Jun 12, 2002, dissolving the marriage of a girl who had been given in swara at the age of six.