The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) condemns the ongoing practice of child marriage in Sindh, Pakistan, which continues to violate the rights, safety, and futures of thousands of young girls. In collaboration with the World Sindhi Congress (WSC), UNPO has published a new article in the UNPO Academy, exposing the systemic drivers of this crisis and calling attention to the urgent need for protection, accountability and enforcement of existing laws.
This publication highlights how political marginalization, entrenched social hierarchies, and environmental pressures perpetuate child marriage, while state institutions consistently fail to safeguard vulnerable girls. Through this work, UNPO and WSC denounce the normalization of these harmful practices and demand immediate action to end this widespread human rights abuse.
Child marriage in Sindh is a deeply entrenched phenomenon shaped by decades of political marginalization, economic precarity, and social norms enforced by local power structures. Despite Sindh’s progressive 2014 Child Marriage Restraint Act, which set the minimum marriage age at 18 for both girls and boys, the first in Pakistan to do so, implementation has largely failed.
Despite significant efforts by human rights defenders, local activists, and civil society organizations, the law has not been effectively enforced. This failure is rooted in a combination of anthropological and natural factors, including entrenched social hierarchies, feudal networks, and climate-induced disasters. The state itself, rather than protecting vulnerable girls, often intervenes in ways that exacerbate harm: from arbitrary arrests and kidnappings HRDs’ to enabling large-scale land deals with Chinese partners, prioritizing economic and political interests over the safety and rights of young women. In this context, child marriage persists as a normalized, generational practice, with girls trapped in cycles of exploitation while state institutions remain complicit or indifferent.
UNPO emphasizes that this crisis is not simply a private matter or a cultural anomaly. It is a systemic failure in which local elites, feudal networks, and extremist groups maintain de facto control over rural and marginalized areas, while state institutions, instead of protecting young girls, prioritize political and economic agendas. The persistence of child marriage in Sindh is therefore both a symptom and a perpetuator of structural inequality, reflecting a wider pattern of state neglect and social vulnerability.
The organization calls on the Pakistani government to implement and enforce existing legislation rigorously, invest in economic and social programs to support families, and place the rights and safety of girls at the center of governance. Civil society, human rights defenders, and international actors must continue to amplify this issue and ensure accountability, so that every girl in Sindh can grow up free from coercion, exploitation, and forced marriage.
