Continuum of harm.

WE may never know what the perfect age for marriage should be, but experts list countless disadvantages when boys and girls wed at an early age. Underage marriage thrusts both boys and girls into the sphere of adult responsibilities long before they are ready for them.

No country has been able to eliminate child marriage and make it, to borrow from legalese, void ab initio, or 'illegal at the outset', although India's Karnataka state is an exception. Technically speaking, child marriage is prohibited in Pakistan for girls under 16 (except for Sindh where it is 18) and boys under 18. Still, girls continue to get married well below the legal age under the cover of religion or by parental consent.

Marrying underage girls mean child brides and their offspring will continue to be locked into an intergenerational cycle of poverty and illiteracy. On the other hand, ending child marriage enables them to finish school, delay motherhood and fulfil their dreams. Pakistan stands sixth among 20 countries with the highest number of child marriages, says Girls Not Brides, a network of CSOs aiming to end this scourge.

A Senate bill to end child marriage has not come a moment too soon.

Study after study shows that child marriage exposes young girls to violence, and often puts an end to their education. Child marriage is also a precursor to early pregnancy which may increase the risk of complications during childbirth.

Pakistan has legislated on several laws to end early marriages: it inherited the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 (CMRA), which was followed by the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961, that increased the age of consent to marriage from 14 to 16. In 2015, Punjab made amendments to the CMRA, empowering the police to file a complaint and stop an underage marriage from taking place. However, it did not allow them to make arrests, nor did it increase the age of marriage for girls.

Sindh did better. The Sindh Child MarAriage Restraint Act, 2013 (SCMRA), inAAcreaAsed the minimum age for marriage for girls to 18, and empowered the police to make arrests without waiting for a complaint to be registered. A similar bill, proposing to increase the legal age for marriage from 16 to 18 nationwide, was struck down in the National Assembly in 2014 and then again in 2017.

The issue recently got a shot in the arm when the Child Marriage Restraint (AmendAment) Bill, 2018, was presented in the Senate. It defines a 'child' as anyone under 18 and by default...