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Young Pakistani Activist Hadiqa Bashir Fights Forced Child Marriage Arshad Mehmood
Bashir works in Swat Valley, until recently a Pakistani Taliban stronghold
[Islamabad] Hadiqa Bashir, 19, has been actively working against early and forced marriages for the last eight years in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, once a hotbed of the Pakistani Taliban.
For years, the Taliban broadcasted threats on the radio to intimidate girls into not attending school. The militants controlled the entire valley from 2007 to 2009, when the Pakistani Army retook the area.
Bashir has taken on the challenge of ending child marriage in a community where it is the norm and where girls can be offered for marriage in exchange for settling disputes.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, organisations around the world raised alarms about the rise in child marriages. Non-profit organisation Save The Children warned that “half a million more girls are at risk of child marriage in the pandemic year, and the increase is set to reverse 25 years of progress, which saw child marriage rates decline.”
Analysis conducted by the NGO revealed that a further 2.5 million girls were at risk of early marriage by 2025, only because of the pandemic. Added to the 58.4 million child marriages taking place on average every five years, this amounts to a staggering 61 million child marriages by 2025, as reported by Save the Children.
National
January 22, 2021
PESHAWAR: Up to 18 per cent of women in Pakistan aged 20-24 reported being married before the age of 18 as compared to 4.7 per cent men in the same age bracket, said the data released by Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18.
Citing the document, women rights activists said on Thursday the data showed that child marriages stood at 28 per cent in settled and 35 per cent in the tribal districts of KP.
They pointed out that the legal age for marriage for girls in Pakistan is 16 years, under the Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA) 1929, except for the province of Sindh where it has been increased to 18 years for both girls and boys.
The Ulterior Motives Behind Madhya Pradesh Govt s Proposal on Women Safety
In the name of trying to provide security to women, they cannot commit the illegal act of tracking them.
Representative image. Photo: Reuters/B Mathur
Women18/Jan/2021
Recently, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan suggested that the age of marriage for women be increased. On August 15, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech announced that the Central government had set up a committee and a task force to examine the possibility of increasing the age of marriage for women from the present 18 years to 21 years.
Chouhan also said a new system would be put in place, under which any woman moving out of her house for her work will register herself at the local police station, and she will be tracked for her safety. A helpline number will be provided to such women, enabling them to call for help in case of distress. The installation of panic buttons in public transportation will be m