"Laws can protect. Laws can fail. The difference is not the ink on the page but the courage in the system that enforces them."
Pakistan’s Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 is a provincial reform. It confirms 18 as the legal minimum age of marriage, criminalises under-age unions, and places responsibility on adults, religious officiants and registrars who arrange, enable or solemnise them.
This is a provincial law. At the time of writing, it applies only in Balochistan and has not yet been extended nationwide across Pakistan.
As someone who has spent decades confronting forced marriage as a crime and a human rights violation, I welcome this legislation. Forced marriage is child abuse. It targets girls and children who are often married to men many years older than them, taken out of school, and silenced by stigma, threats, isolation and coercion. The law is progress. It is not a conclusion.
In the United Kingdom, Freedom Charity was one of the organisations that campaigned for forced marriage to be recognised in law as a specific criminal offence. From the beginning our position has been clear.
"Forced marriage is child abuse. Dishonour abuse puts the shame back where it belongs, on the perpetrator, not the child."
Aneeta Prem, Freedom Charity
This framing matters in Pakistan as much as it does in the UK. Language shapes how institutions respond when a girl or child is at risk.
What the Act does
• Minimum marriage age set at 18
• Two to three years’ imprisonment plus fines for adults who contract, facilitate or solemnise a child marriage
• Mandatory identity verification before registration or religious ceremonies
• Offences designated as cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable
• Marriages contracted under kidnapping, sale, trafficking or compulsion treated as void
• Children born within illegal unions retain legitimacy and maintenance rights
This is the architecture of accountability. It makes child marriage a criminal act, not a cultural misunderstanding.
Why this law matters
According to UNICEF, Pakistan has one of the highest numbers of child brides in South Asia. UN Women has warned that child marriage entrenches poverty across generations, increases maternal and neonatal risk, and cuts girls off from education and economic independence.
The Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 is therefore significant. It attempts to move the province from passive tolerance to active intervention. But legislation alone cannot break the cycle.
Police must record offences consistently.
Courts must recognise coercion rather than rely only on obvious physical resistance.
Registrars must refuse to officiate irregular unions.
Families must trust the law enough to disclose abuse.
Without this, the Act becomes a promise rather than protection.
Under international law
Child marriage and forced marriage are not just social or cultural issues. Under international law they breach commitments that Pakistan, like many states, has signed up to. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women expects equality in marriage and family life. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires protection from violence and access to health. The global development goals commit governments to ending early and forced marriage altogether.
These are not Western preferences. They are universal standards that every child should be able to rely on.
In my work on forced marriage in the UK, I have seen the same patterns described in Pakistan and Afghanistan: girls hidden in plain sight, passports confiscated, futures negotiated as if they were dowries. The language changes from country to country. The abuse does not.
Will the Act be enforced?
Laws fail when public bodies lack training, when religious authorities refuse compliance, when witnesses fear retaliation, when police recording systems buckle under stigma, and when courts require impossible standards of proof.
This is where Balochistan’s reform will be tested. It will be judged not by the severity of its penalties, but by the integrity of its implementation.
In the UK, the criminalisation of forced marriage in 2014 only began to change practice when it was combined with Forced Marriage Protection Orders, specialist police units and a national helpline. Even now, recording inconsistencies and community pressure remain a problem.
Pakistan will face similar obstacles and will need investment in practice, not just statute.
Language is part of the solution
I use the term dishonour abuse deliberately.
Where the word “honour” is used, abuse is often obscured. In my work at Freedom Charity, we replaced the language of honour with dishonour, because the shame rests not on the girl or child who resists, but on the adult who coerces.
If Balochistan’s legal reform is to change reality on the ground, public communication must make clear that tradition can never excuse child abuse. Culture is never a defence to a crime.
Progress is patchwork
Reform is not linear.
• Kazakhstan has amended its criminal code to prohibit forced marriage, treating it as a form of exploitation or modern slavery
• Afghanistan is seeing a rise in forced and under-age marriages linked to school bans for girls and economic crisis
• Balochistan has reformed its law while other Pakistani provinces remain inconsistent
Global change looks less like a single tide and more like a patchwork. Protection in one place, regression in another.
Why this matters to the UK
Forced marriage does not respect borders. In the UK, we see cases involving cross-border coercion, sudden relocations to avoid scrutiny, and marriages contracted abroad to circumvent domestic law then imported back as a fait accompli.
Understanding reforms abroad is part of safeguarding British girls and children with international family links. UK professionals need to know what the law abroad says, what it does not, and how to escalate concerns when a girl is at risk of being taken overseas.
If adopted nationwide, a version of this law could fundamentally change the landscape of child protection across Pakistan.
Finally...
This law is an important step. Its enforcement will require more courage than its drafting.
Until child marriage is eradicated, in Pakistan, in the UK and beyond, we cannot speak of progress as success. We can only speak of progress as evidence that success is still possible.
References and further reading
UNICEF, Child marriage profiles: Pakistan and South Asia (2025).
UN Women, Child marriage and harmful practices brief (2025).
Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 (provincial legislation).
CEDAW, Article 16.
CRC, Articles 19 and 24.
UN SDG 5.3.
NGO reporting on Afghanistan, forced marriage and girls’ education.
Kazakhstan Criminal Code amendments on forced marriage.
What does “provincial law” mean?
Pakistan’s legal system has federal and provincial levels. Certain areas of law, including marriage, can fall under provincial authority. The Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 applies only in Balochistan. It is an important step in one province, not a nationwide reform. By Aneeta Prem
The Gambia’s Supreme Court is hearing a case that could weaken the ban on FGM. This clear explainer shows why it matters for child protection worldwide.
When families watch, follow and report: the hidden stalking dynamic behind forced marriage and dishonour abuse
How AI nudification is turning everyday photos into a new form of sexual abuse against children Two strong alternatives, depending on outlet tone: How AI nudification apps are normalising sexual abuse and putting children at risk
Capacity, Consent and Dishonour Abuse: Why “no capacity means no consent” is the safeguard the world is still failing to apply
Female genital mutilation in the UK: what we don’t say out loud. Female genital mutilation is not “a problem elsewhere”. It is child abuse happening in the UK and worldwide, and girls need us to name it.
Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 Provincial law: minimum marriage age 18. Cognisable, non-bailable, non-compoundable offences. Forced marriage is child abuse. The shame lies with the perpetrator, not the child.