Due to poverty and unemployment, where other social evils have arisen, the scourge of selling young girls and forcing them into forced marriages has increased rapidly, and legislations to prevent this have also been effective.
The main reason is that there is a lack of dialogue and tolerance in the society and the rulers and elites are unable to understand the long-standing problems of the people and they want to do everything by coercion and so-called legislation, which has yielded results. Not happening.
UN experts in Geneva have expressed concern over the alleged increase in abductions, conversions and forced marriages of young girls and young women from religious minorities in Pakistan, calling for a halt to such practices and justice for victims. Urgent efforts to ensure Government of Pakistan needs to take these concerns seriously.
It is unfortunate that despite the existence of domestic legislation in this regard and Pakistan’s signing of international human rights commitments, criminals still manage to get away with their crimes. Successive governments have failed to hold accountable those involved in abductions that result in conversions and marriages.
The second major reason for these forced marriages is poverty, it is poverty that forces parents to sell their girls and the biggest problem of the country at this time is poverty, the measures to reduce it have been stopped for decades in our country.
The United Nations considers such abductions, conversions and marriages to be modern forms of slavery. Many girls who are married are young or under the age of consent. A large number of these girls often belong to minority religious communities. When girls under the age of 13 are forced to leave home or leave home voluntarily, this law prohibits child abduction. Not much different because they are taken away from their families by force or persuasion.
They marry men much older than their age, sometimes twice their age. Those are subjected to coercion, a violation of international human rights law. In some cases there is even a risk of violence if the girl wants to return to her parents who feel helpless and unprotected in an increasingly intolerant society.
Access to justice also becomes a major issue here as Pakistan still lacks adequate legislation and prosecution to prevent forced conversions. This has made and the religious minority communities weaker and weaker against the abductors of their daughters young women. Pakistan needs to improve access to justice for victims and their families.
Our justice system, religious authorities and law enforcement agencies need to understand the seriousness of this problem and work together to protect minorities from forced conversions and forced marriages but the tragedy is that we still have this problem. It has not been understood but it is called propaganda of non-religions, which is a complete abuse.
Although the issue of conversion of religion is only in Sindh but the marriage of young girls and their sale is common in all backward areas of the country which has been given different names while the marriages of Vata Sata, Wani, Surah and Badal are its names.
Apart from that girls are grinding in the mill. For the prevention of that is necessary to strictly implement the existing laws in the country and take strict actions against the vaderas and khawaneen who oppose it and who head such illegal jirgas.
Until the implementation of the law in this regard in the country, oppression will continue. Therefore, it’s needed to take measures at the government level to prevent such marriages which are not equal. Often such a forced marriage is not noticed until someone reports it on their own. There is no such system in our country to automatically monitor such forced marriages.
