KARACHI: Lawyers’ community and civil society activists on Thursday spoke at length on the launch of an extensive review and analysis of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013 in which they highlighted the pros and cons of the law, which they said if addressed, could cause huge positive impact on the society at large.

They said that being the landmark legislation aimed at ending early marriages in Sindh, the law was still poorly implemented.

They added that lack of proper structures and sensitisation, poor resources and deficiency of serious efforts were contributing factors vis-à-vis poor progress of the act at grass-roots level.

They were talking at a provincial dialogue attended by among others, a large number of community activists, who came from across the province.

The programme was organised by the Sindh Community Foundation (SCF) in collaboration with the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. The SCF launched its review and analysis of the law.

The speakers included Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education (Piler), rights experts Iqbal Detho, Zulfiqar Halepoto, Tahir Malik of the Legal Aid Forum, Javed Hussain of the SCF, journalist Mahesh Kumar, and Shahnaz Sheedi of the South Asia Partnership-Pakistan.

The speakers identified gaps in the law, saying that the rules of business of the act had long been formulated and duly put in place, however, apt implementation of the law was still needed.

They said the government mechanism to implement the law was weak, leaving it hard to deal with the cases relating to early marriages.

“There is a need to strengthen the implementation mechanism as highlighted in the recommendation of the review,” said Javed Hussain.

Sindh police data was shared with the audience, which showed that only 51 cases had so far been registered under the law in question across the province.

“The police officials are not aware of the laws in other areas/districts except the three targeted districts where the SCF and a few NGOs have intervened,” said Mr Hussain.

Karamat Ali said the plight of the children of Sindh was the worst among the provinces ranging from malnutrition to being subjected to various forms of injustice.

The speakers were of the view that there was a need to continuously support the required infrastructure to make such laws further effective.

They said child protection units (CPUs) played basic role in implementing the law, but in many districts they were missing; and in the districts where they had been established the districts had poor resources and weaker role in implementing the law.

“There is a need for more resources and greater attention to make this law an effective tool to save children from being married too early,” said a speaker.

The speakers emphasised that the district monitoring committees (DMCs) had been notified under the law but they had attracted feeble response and remained ineffective to put the law in practice at the local level.

Experts and rights activists linked feudal mindset with the gender inequality and poor implementation of the law at the local level.

They were of the view that the Sindh government was active in passing such a good law, but the implementation was lacking.

They said the Sindh government was to allocate resources to promote awareness of the law at the local level; but four years had passed, yet the fact was that so far only 51 cases were registered with the police.

“This shows this law is still not on the priority of the government to implement it in letter and spirit.”

They called for proper budget allocation to strengthen the required system and effective oversight.

A number of lawyers and activists were awarded shields for their efforts to work actively for gender equality and prevent early marriages in their regions.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2017