Global Roundup: The Fight to Ban Child Marriage in Pakistan, Women Defying Compulsory Hijab in Iran, Korea’s Deep Sea Divers, Intl Booker Prize Winners, Pushing Change in Ice Skating

Senator Naseema Ehsan via The Guardian

During a tense debate last week over whether the Pakistan senate should pass a bill banning child marriage, Naseema Ehsan, a 50-year-old senator stood up to speak.

I got married at 13 years old and I want child marriage to be banned. I was lucky to have good and affluent in-laws but most Pakistani women are not so lucky. Not every child has a supportive husband like me. -Senator Naseema Ehsan

When she finished talking, there was applause in the chamber.

Despite fierce opposition, later that day the bill banning child marriage in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, was passed. It will be signed into law by the president in the coming days and replace legislation introduced under British colonial rule.

The landmark parliamentary vote comes more than a decade after a similar bill was passed in Sindh province. Senators, civil society organisations and activists hope that because this latest bill was passed by both houses of Pakistan’s legislature, other regions will follow suit, eventually outlawing child marriage throughout the country.

Politician Sherry Rehman tabled the bill in the senate after Sharmila Farooqi introduced it in Pakistan’s lower house, the national assembly.

This bill sends a powerful message. It’s a very important signal to the country, to our development partners, and to women that their rights are protected at the top. -Senator Sherry Rehman

Under the new legislation, the minimum age for marriage is 18 for both males and females in the capital, with underage marriage now a criminal offence. Previously, it was 16 for girls but 18 for boys.

Strict punishments, including up to seven years in prison, have been introduced for people – including family members, clerics and registrars – who facilitate or coerce children into early marriage. Any sexual relations within a marriage involving a minor – with or without consent – will be deemed statutory rape, while an adult man found to have married a girl could face up to three years in prison.

It is a moment of hope in an increasingly gloomy landscape for women’s rights globally, according to Jamshed Kazi, Pakistan’s representative for UN Women.

This particular passage [of the bill] is even more significant because it’s happening in the wake of counter-currents. We are seeing a global pushback on women’s rights and even a renegotiation of issues that were settled maybe 30 years ago. Countries are challenging the use of gender-responsive language, and even sexual and reproductive health and rights. -Jamshed Kazi

In Pakistan, 29% of girls are married by 18 , according to a 2018 demographic survey, and that 4% marry before the age of 15 compared with 5% for boys, according to Girls Not Brides, a global coalition aiming to end child marriage. The country is among the top 10 worldwide with the highest absolute number of women who were married or in a union before the age of 18.

Ehsan knows only too well the dangers facing girls who are married early. She had her first child at 15. Her in-laws could afford medical care and she had three more children in consecutive years. She dropped out of school but her husband allowed her to continue her studies privately.

I had complications during pregnancy. Doctors told me I was weak because I was very young – a child. My health, and my daughter’s health, were affected. At 20, I came to the realisation that I should have finished my studies and waited till 19, at least, to become a mother. I would have been able to take care of my children more. -Senator Naseema Ehsan

Since then, she has seen many cases of child brides dying in childbirth in her home province of Balochistan, where girls can get married at 16. A woman dies due to pregnancy complications in Pakistan every 50 minutes.

I’ve never been so content to vote for a bill as the child marriage restraint bill. The world has changed and developed. We have progressed and we must embrace the progress … It was a very much needed bill. -Senator Naseema Ehsan