Anti-Child Marriage Struggle
SuPWR

Notes on the Legislative Process

From Struggle Participants

Part 1: Lobbying Parliamentarians

Sindh

At that time what happened was that we started keeping bills ‘in our bags’, drafts of bills, the instruments against child marriage. Whenever or wherever we saw an MPA or MNA, we would explain the objectives of the bill and hand over the bill to them. We would say, you as a private member please present this bill. At that time the donor requirement was that, we were working in Sindh as well as KP and Punjab – at that time, not a lot of influence in KP, the most influence was in Sindh. In Sindh, the PPP is a very progressive party, so when we gave a bill for Sindh, the bill that we or the CRM had we gave to Sharmila Farooqi – it was a very progressive bill, including punishments, fines, very critical type of stuff. [Child Rights Movement]

Sindh

We developed the lobbying document. It was used and there was very intense lobbying by organisations. Aurat Foundation was there. There were several other organisations who lobbied for this. There was NGO-RC, Marie Stopes, FPAP, Packard Foundation, and even organisations like the Indus Resource Centre which focuses on girl's education...So everyone got together, lobbied and that law was passed [Sindh 2014]. I think that it is a big success because first of all it accepts that you have a law like that. These may be small successes but very important milestones. They are important milestones in the struggle, that you are trying to establish. [Shirkat Gah]

Sindh

One of the gaps identified in the SCMRA [Sindh 2014] is that there is no clause in the law which states what could be done once the marriage has taken place. Our past efforts have also involved reaching out to legislators like Shehla Raza, Nasir Shah and members of Youth Parliament to lobby for amendments in the SCMRA. We have also reached out to Noman Salam Sheikh, Awais Shah. Policymakers need to be involved, and unless policy makers are involved, neither can the bill be implemented nor can amendments take place. [NARI]

ICT

When we went to the National Assembly, we phoned Marvi Memon. We used to identify Sindh ‘champions’, the champions amongst the MNAs and MPAs. We used to give them these bills so that they would present them. We thought Marvi Memon was a very smart woman, she would do this. I think this was the Nawaz Sharif era. We went to her house, she invited us. When we give these people a bill, they ask for an ‘objectives statement’, you give a light background to it with evidence, and you further explain what new thing is proposed in the bill. When we gave that to her, she presented it in the National Assembly. [Child Rights Movement]

Punjab

In the Punjab Assembly, Mussarat Jamshed had already presented this bill, its many resolutions, female MPAs of all the parties meaning all the female MPAs of ruling party and the opposition have given joint resolution that its legislation should be done, but there is no further discussion on it. They are not going above the 16 years, and our effort is that they have fixed the age at16, so at least rules should be formed so that below 16, nothing happens, rest we will keep doing the efforts for amendment. [Bedari]

Sindh

The disaster was that two bills emerged from within the same party. And both bills were presented. When both those bills were presented, debate started on those bills. ‘Dono auratein takray ki theen’ (both women were very vocal/competitive), one said my bill should pass, the other said mine. For this reason, it took 6 months, and the delay started. In Sindh, what happens is that if the Human Rights Committee of the Assembly deems the bill essential, it sends the bill for review to the CII or the Council of Islamic Ideology. In Sindh they did not think it necessary and they passed it unanimously. And it was signed and went through. [Child Rights Movement]

Sindh

There were three drafts of the law [Sindh 2014]. One was Sharmila Foorqui’s draft made by Iqbal Detho (entire bill)...Second was Shazia Marri’s, and third was Rubina Qaimkhani. She was the Minister for Social Welfare, and subsequently became the Minister for Women’s Development Department. All the bills were from Peoples Party from the Treasury side...The bill that came had gaps. I think they had thought strategically about the gaps. For example, if they would include consent then the debate about puberty would spark. They just increased the age. But the other good thing about the Sindh law is that they made the offense of child marriage ‘cognizable’. This means that the police does not need permission from the court to register a case. The third good thing about the law was that punishment became stricter in Sindh. [SPARC]

Part 3: The Role of Female Legislators

Sindh

There were three drafts of the law. One was Sharmila Faruqui’s draft. Second was Shazia Marri’s, and third was Rubina Qaimkhani. She was the Minister for Social Welfare, and subsequently became the Minister for Women’s Development Department. All the bills were from People's Party from the Treasury side. (SPARC)

ICT

Marvi Memon first presented the bill and that bill before going to the Council of Islamic Ideology, went into the standing committee that was supposed to discuss it, but the bill did not move forward. After that the senator of People's Party presented the bill in the Senate...Sehar Kamran, she first prepared the bill, it again remained in the committee and during that time, the tenure of Sehar Kamran finished. Then this bill was handed over to Sherry Rehman. Her way of presenting the law is that she always does consultation with the relevant people, so, she called the members of the Child Rights Movement and some other alliances, violence against women and girls alliance, and further fine tuned it before presenting it. [Bedari]

Punjab

Our research has also validated that females MPAs are more keen in bringing legislations and assembly business. So Uzma Kardar and Mussarat Jamshed have a role as they presented the bill. When they came they explored which agendas they should talk about, they had interactions with NGOs, so as the agenda of child marriage was at the very top, all these people started presenting their own bills. Then they were brought together on the basis that if a single bill goes, then it will be passed. Many female MPAs are given orientation on how assembly business works, so very clearly we had to coordinate with them about where the challenge could come. They jointly presented the resolution...So, it is a different matter that when females come in policymaking, they have a lot of challenges, in Punjab especially, because it is quite male dominated in the assembly. N league passed the 2015 bill, so if you talk with any female MPA, they will know about it. [Bedari]

Sindh

Part 1: Law Making & Political Attitudes

So, in 2013 when it was imminent that this law would pass, they [religious seminaries across Sindh] also asserted a lot of influence to try and block this law from passing. It was passed unanimously but somehow at that point in time the Sindh Government was able to resist that pressure. [Aurat Foundation]

This law originated from the Sindh Assembly which is known for making progressive laws, and it has been a tradition of the Sindh Assembly that they have always made progressive laws and stood up in favour of women's rights. Due to these reasons, traditionally there may be many flaws, but People's Party has been a rights-based party and there has been a focus on women's rights. So, as activists it is easier for us to convince them on women's rights issues and to demand from them as compared to going to those parties that do not believe in these things. The other party that has been in Sindh, apart from People's Party, is MQM and there may be many problems and biases in MQM but you can call them a progressive party in terms of women's rights issues. Therefore, as we got support here from both parties for our ideas, so laws which were in women's favour have always been pushed...but when the law is passed, it goes to the governor and the governor refused to sign. It was sent to him again and he refused again. In the meantime all the religious lobby in the country became very active especially JUI and Jama'at-e-Islami. JUI being an ally party to People's Party in the National Assembly contacted Zardari Sahib and said that we do not want you to bring this law in Sindh, because it will then be replicated in other provinces as well. [Women's Action Forum]

One province which is otherwise very feudal, not very progressive in its social structures, but, in terms of law making we find that the Sindh Assembly is always ahead of the other. And I think partly it has to do with the People's Party mindset. Although individuals within People's Party may be very classist or sexist, and feudal minded. But the point is that laws in Sindh Assembly are always more progressive and very easily passed. In the sense that this law was also passed with consensus, unanimously. So that has to do with the composition of the assembly, but also the access that activists had. There was very close interaction with activists outside the assembly and the parliamentarians within. That connection! Some organisations did very well, others not very well. So there was an intellectual component, and there was the activist component and all of that comes together. [Shirkat Gah]

Meanwhile we started work on Sindh Rules of Business for the Child Marriage Restraint Act that had been passed. Mainstream NGOs worked on the Rules of Business – Plan International, Save the Children, Rutgers – they worked on this, but they would include us in the consultations as activists. The Rules of Business were good, they are not flawless but they have less loopholes because Sindh’s policies are good policies and good laws. I am not giving a sweeping statement. In 2017, we analyzed 11 laws of Sindh, Punjab and the National level from gender-transformative approaches. What is the extent of presenting a woman as a victim in all these laws and to what extent do we define a man as a culprit (e.g. time of arrest, bail, etc.)? We realized during this analysis that Sindh’s laws meet the parameters of gender-transformative approaches and they are very sensibly made laws. They are cohesive, they make sense. [Child Rights Movement]

Sindh vs. Punjab

In Sindh, the legislators, especially the women legislators, are very active. There is a women's caucus group which deals with women specific laws and there is a child caucus group, which is trying to improve children’s laws, regardless of what party they are from, all are active women which support the government's laws. PPP government anywhere, since they have governed at the national level as well, they have been promoting legislations. They lie on the left and are open minded people, so they do not halt laws. Even in the Senate when the law was being discussed, PPP played a good role. In Punjab, there are issues of bureaucrats, and secondly the MPAs and ministers are themselves not clear till now. The law of 18 years of marriage was in the Punjab government as well but didn’t pass. If you look at it from this point of view, I think it is a little difficult in Punjab. Many of my friends from the NGOs are working in Punjab and they tell me that it is difficult to work there. But there is no difficulty in Sindh. Representatives come to our meetings, and we even met Bilawal, at the CRM Secretariat, and they gave a very good response. Even PTI people in Sindh are working on human rights issues, there is no party system, I think good, educated people support this cause everywhere. [Child Rights Movement]

Part 2: Complexities of Implementation

We figured that there's no point in just talking to parliamentarians and trying to re-amend the law and re-fix it. And whatever the procedural shortcomings of the law may be, something as simple as the fact that reporting for an actual child who was being forced into marriage or her sympathizers is incredibly difficult or for that matter for the police not knowing that it's not a non-cognisable offense anymore…it is cognisable now. Or for that matter the difficulty in including the crimes of rape and kidnapping, etc., in the same FIR…these different issues need to be sorted out within the law. The fact that the law exists, it's still not common knowledge, so we really have bigger fish to fry, to be honest. [Legal Aid Society]

When the Child Marriage Restraint Act was presented, for its implementation the donor said, what are you going to do? After thinking about it for a long time, I said let’s work on the nikah nama. We edited the Sindh nikah nama. It was very interesting work. We sent for nikah nama copies. We edited them, made the CNIC mandatory, qazi details, names of witnesses and their thumb prints, we also put an undertaking in it from the qazi that ‘mein iss baat ki tasdeeq karta hoon kay mein bachi aur bachay kay shinakhti card ko deikh kay iss nikah ko parha raha houn aur bachi ki umar CNIC kay mutabiq 18 saal say upar hai’ (‘I certify that I have solemnized this nikah after checking the CNICs of the bride and groom and that the bride, according to her CNIC, is above 18 years of age’). It was a very strong nikah nama. Unfortunately, Rutgers was shut down. The Economic Affairs people said that Rutgers was spreading ‘fahashi’ (obscenity), so the nikah nama just stood there at that stage. [Child Rights Movement]

It is happening in every law, the implementation has not been done of any the laws which have been made in Sindh. The issue lies in implementation, and we also criticised, that you have the laws made but don’t get them implemented. The problem is that the civil society cannot do anything in this, we can only raise awareness that’s all. The law has been made and you abide by it, can report that the law is being violated, but there are so many issues like poverty, etc. Even in this pandemic we heard that child marriages increased because people were sitting at home and out of anxiety got the girls married off, these type of cases also came up. [Aurat Foundation]

In a society where you are stopped from questioning and where you are fearful of talking, even I am afraid of saying anything that if I say something and step out, people will say that I have talked against religion or somebody else, and before I give my explanation people will kill me. So, we are living in this society and working in fear, we are fearful that when we are implicated in any charge, all this is happening in society. And then being a woman is a double vulnerability. [Aurat Foundation]

The crux was that the institutions at the state level have to monitor at their district level, whether it is police or women's development or social welfare department, and the monitoring committees are there which are non-functional. They are functional at some places while at some they are not...Under every district administration in which there are Deputy Commissioners, it is mandatory for them to constitute a committee of 14 to 15 people who have oversight over them in the districts and include representatives from the police, social welfare, etc. We talk to Police because women protection cells are formed in every district. When the cases come, although no girl comes by herself, somebody reports to the police and then they stop the marriage. But sometimes it so happens that the marriage had already taken place and there are many complications, while in other instances there are good examples of having the marriage stopped. When police, media, and civil society work together, many marriages have been stopped and people have understood the consequences and are fearful of doing early marriages openly. [HANDS]

The issue is that there is no coordination between different departments. And secondly the issues shift to social welfare department because they have plenty of extra staff, they have far more funds than the women's ministry. Women's ministry has always been kept very marginalised, they do not have much funds or staff. Social welfare officers are present in every district and at every place. Work will be taken from social welfare officers in the Child Marriage Restraint Act, we have given responsibility of apprehending them or taking action to the police. So I think we completely forget the tier of government which is local bodies, we have completely forgotten the local bodies and local bodies can be most helpful in this because there are very small constituencies and if a woman faces violence, where she can run to at night, if her neighbour is a woman councilor, she will go to her. Similarly, if there is any issue with her children, which happens quite often that a mother doesn’t want but father wants that he is getting some money or a proposal has come for their 14-year-old daughter and wants to get her married off, so where can she go, if a councilor has some training and authority and they have a liaison with the police station that if any violation takes place, the councilor has a right to take action with the police. So, I think it is very important to activate the tier of local bodies. [Women's Action Forum]

Do you know the administrative department in Sindh that is responsible for implementation of the 2014 law? Women's Development Department (WDD). Do you know why? Even though WDD is stated in the law for implementation, but actually the Social Welfare Department (SWD) should be implementing it. The subject of child is basically to be dealt by SWD. This was a war within People's Party that is who will be responsible to implement the law. When Rubina Qaimkhani became the Secretary of WDD, she got the bill presented from WDD. She took credit from WDD and introduced the bill. Otherwise, the bill was supposed to be introduced from SWD. The subject of below the age of 18 is the mandate of SWD. Thus, this led to a lot of confusion as the bill was passed from WDD. [SPARC]

The issue now is that the implementation of Child Marriage Restraint Act at the Zila level requires District Monitoring Committees (DMC) which have been created. This comes under Social Welfare Department (SWD)...There are no Women's Development Department (WDD) officers present at the Zila level. How will you organise a DMC quarterly meeting? You have not given them any budgets. The Secretariat of DMC is with WDD, and there are no budget provisions for meetings, etc. I think that the subject of child should be given to the SWD. Dar-ul-Amans, for example, have been transferred from SWD to WDD. Similarly, the subject of child should be transferred to SWD. Because, even now a lot of child related laws at the Zila level...The Child rights coordination committee is being managed by social welfare, child protection units are also under social welfare, the case of child marriages are also being looked by social welfare. When you already have infrastructure such as child protection officer, child rights committee, etc., then why are you going to create a parallel structure that has not yet been functional in these years. [SPARC]

Now the issue is that people in Sindh go to Punjab for marriage, especially if they are being dealt with harshly here (Sindh). We need to make uniform laws overall in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan and Punjab. Of course, if it is stopped in two places, they can go to KP as well. So, I understand that, and I believe there is a need to make the same law in every province. [HANDS]

Punjab & ICT

Part 1: Legislative Process & Political Attitudes

I’ll now come to Punjab. When provinces became independent from Islamabad for law-making, Punjab tabled its bill too. Punjab thought we should also make a law on this. Our friends in the CRM who were working there, two big lawyers, they very thoroughly and rigorously analyzed all the laws through NGOs. Except for the age of marriage, the Punjab law is better than that of Sindh. On the age of marriage the same problem arose that the ICT and Punjab are very highly influenced by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). In one way, this 18th Amendment is a good thing, Sindh is running in a proper manner. Punjab and ICT are very densely influenced by the CII. In KP also, when they understand something, they get it done. They don’t come under the Islamic influence so much. In Punjab they made some amendments, and other nitty gritty details. They did that but could not raise the age of marriage. [Child Rights Movement]

Then what happened was that Sehar Kamran got a fatwa from Jamia Al-Azhar against child marriage. Then we collected some evidence for this on all Muslim majority countries where the age is 18 and above. We made a list of this. We made a presentation on the countries where the age of marriage was over 18. There were many things like these. This bill was presented by Sehar Kamran, as I told you. After a lot of discussion they referred it to the CII. When we found out the CII’s position on this in the background, with the CII saying you can have the nikah at any age and have the rukhsati later, this was like a disaster. After that we stopped following up on this bill and now its lying somewhere. But we need to retrieve it because in the government system if its turn arises and God forbid if it is accepted on these parameters then it will be an issue for us. Then we went silent, we said let’s stop this now. [Child Rights Movement]

In the Punjab Assembly, Mussarat Jamshed had already presented this bill, its many resolutions, female MPAs of ruling party and the opposition have given a joint resolution that its legislation should be done, but there is no further discussion on it. They are not going above 16 years, and our effort is that they have fixed the age at 16, so at least rules should be formed so that below 16 nothing happens. Rest we will keep doing the efforts for amendment...So, our current effort is that the 16 years law which was passed in 2015, its rules have not been made and it’s been six years, so we have the rules made so at least this will be implemented. [Bedari]

The law which was passed in Punjab in 2015, age was kept at 16 years, but the punishments increased. Nikkah Khawans are also punishable, parents of both bride and groom are punishable, so this was not there before...There is imprisonment and the fine is also above three lacs rupees, so at least when the punishments will come into practice, parents will know that they can go to jail, or we have to give three lacs fine, so this will prove to be better to a large extent. [Bedari]

Usually contestation comes from the religious parties or the centrist parties. For instance, in Punjab PML-N under Shahbaz Sharif did a lot of things for promoting women’s rights, their economic rights, position and decision making, women’s inheritance rights. They came with packages (twice). But when it came to the age of marriage, that he didn’t change. Because it is a conservative party. While they supported a whole range of things for women. They tried to change the age but gave into the pressure from within the party, also that “abhi toh yehi rehne dein”, we’ll see about it later. There was a backlash also from the religious parties. Somehow Sindh mei itni religious parties ki strength bhi nahi hai...The real force is the PPP which has a lot of feudal mentality the way it functions but on the other hand also has progressive people in it...Sindh is far ahead from all others. [Shirkat Gah]

Part 2: Complexities of Implementation

Age in Punjab is not harmonized. In every law age is different even though it is a requirement of UNHCR that age should be defined. Every law has a different age. Child labour has two laws, general and brick kiln in which the age is 15 and 14, respectively. In child marriage the age is 16 and 18 years. Similarly, in education age is 16 years so we have different thresholds. Now a lot of work is being done even with parliamentarians. Last month we conducted a workshop with parliamentarians and in the evening, we gave a grand reception in which Zulfi Bukhari, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister participated as a Chief Guest along with senators, MNAs, parliamentarians from Punjab. Our main agenda was that child marriage age should be enhanced from 16 to 18 years. Now government is also trying to make the requirement of ID card compulsory for the marriage so the age is automatically 18 years, but you know how we are in Pakistan.. How difficult is it to make an ID card? There has been a case where a girl was 14 years but her ID card was made and she got married. [Child Rights Movement]

At the moment there is no effective work going on in Punjab in the context of child marriage, all the things are at a standstill. There are two reasons for this. First, that NGOs have been harassed by the institutions for NOCs, MOUs, etc., and they are regularly visited by the agency people for investigation, so they are fighting for their survival and don’t have time to pay attention to other issues. Secondly, the political situation is very unstable and there is no chance of attention towards these soft issues, and I think the women caucus in Punjab is not formed or is inactive. I am not sure of the actual situation, but they were trying to form it sometime ago. So, these are the various reasons (for the standstill). Women caucus is the type of organisation where it is easier to bring up human rights issues and you feel encouraged. So, in Punjab the attempt was very full, but they aborted it at the last moment and that made the difference. [Bedari]

We interviewed 60 random MPAs of Punjab, whichever ones we could get hold of. We had made a small form asking if you will support child marriage or not. 25% of the people stated that it is a sin, why are you making us do it, and they were not from the religious parties, because as far as I remember we did not meet anyone from the religious parties. This is a very serious issue. The second issue is that all the MPAs, mostly the lot come from rural and feudal background of Punjab, so they see the label of westernization behind issues of women, girls. The third thing was...you can find Shahbaz Sharif on both sides; he was very effective, but the disadvantage was that he was unreachable, inaccessible, and was not within our access. [Bedari]

When in 2015, 16 years law was passed in Punjab, Punjab Provincial Commission on the Status of Women did a complete project in which all the districts they did training of Nikkah Khawan, that you are liable to punishment if you do not perform Nikkah according to the law. So, this is the next step. Awareness raising is the further next step, we did radio programs and went to TV programs to talk about it, so these are the multiple actions which different NGOs will do, different government departments will do, collaborations will be done, even private sector organisations will be able to play different roles in it. Once the law is passed, its implementation will be the next further step and we will take all the organizations along, government departments, semi government organisations, commissions, child rights commission, provincial commission on the status of women, national commission on the status of women, national commission on human rights or its provincial chapters, everybody will be taken along to get it implemented. [Bedari]

Currently the police have no power...the process is that the complaint should go to the Union Council and the Council will complain to the magistrate and the magistrate will designate the police to conduct the karwai (legal proceedings) but it takes so long that leave marriage apart, a child can born in this time duration as the process is very cumbersome and tedious. Secondly, if you get to know after the marriage has taken place, there is no provision in the law to make the marriage null and void even if husband has gone to jail for 6 months. After 6 months she is till his wife so he will become more violent as due to her he has spent 6 months in jail. So it is a major flaw in the law. [Child Rights Movement]