Pakistan’s progress on child marriage is being challenged in court, again

A petition filed before Pakistan’s Federal Shariat Court in June 2026 asks the Court to revisit a question it has already considered in detail: whether fixing 18 as the minimum age of marriage, rather than puberty, is consistent with Islamic principles.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (JUI), a prominent religio-political party, has challenged the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2025. The Act sets the minimum age of marriage at 18 for both girls and boys in the federal capital. JUI’s petition asks the Court to hold that treating a person who has reached puberty as a child incapable of marriage, is repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah. It also argues that the Act’s penalties for adults who marry children go further than what Islamic law permits.

Pakistan has spent the past several years steadily raising the minimum age of marriage  to 18, province by province, in line with its international human rights obligations and the position most of the world has settled on. This petition tests that progress.

What has the Federal Shariat Court already ruled on this?

The Federal Shariat Court has considered the relationship between the minimum age of marriage and Islamic law on at least two prior occasions. Both judgements reflect settled legal principles that are directly relevant to the question JUI’s petition raises again.

In 2021, in Farooq Omar Bhoja v Federation of Pakistan, the Court examined a challenge to the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929. It held that the practice of swara or vani, where girls, often minors, are given in marriage to settle disputes, was un-Islamic, and found that the state setting a minimum age for marriage was consistent with Islamic principles.

In 2023, in Ali Azhar v Province of Sindh, the Court considered a more direct challenge, that the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, which set 18 as the minimum age for both sexes, was repugnant to Islam because it relied on a fixed age rather than on puberty alone. The Court held that marriage requires more than physical capacity. It also requires rushd, a concept of mental and emotional maturity recognised in Islamic jurisprudence, which does not necessarily arrive at the same time as puberty. The Court found that a state setting a minimum age to protect people until that maturity is reached falls within masalih mursalah, the safeguarding of public interest, and is consistent with the Quran and Sunnah.

How prevalent is child marriage in Pakistan?

Children, especially girls, are affected by child marriage in multiple and interlocking ways. Child brides face physical, mental, and emotional strain before they have fully matured, including the health risks of early pregnancy and childbirth, higher maternal mortality, and a significantly higher risk of infant death. They are more vulnerable to domestic violence, sexual abuse, and marital rape, often without the standing to speak out against it. They are less likely to complete their education, less likely to find paid work, and less able to participate in decisions about their own lives and households.

These harms are not abstract. In Pakistan, nearly 19 million women and girls were married before the age of 18, and 4.6 million were married before 15. Among women married before 18, close to four in five had already given birth before turning 18 themselves. Girls from low-income households, girls with little to no education, and girls in rural areas are roughly twice as likely to be married as children compared with girls from wealthier, more educated, or urban backgrounds. 54% of children married in Pakistan, as per the National Commission on the Rights of the Child 2024 report, were already married in violation of the provincial laws in force at the time, a gap in enforcement as much as in where the legal age is set.

Equality Now’s report, Exploring the Interlinkages Between Child Marriage and Family Laws in South Asia, finds that Pakistan’s overlapping legal definitions of child, puberty, consent, and marriageable age create a structural contradiction that runs through its justice system. A marriage can be a criminal offence under provincial child marriage law and a valid union under family or personal law at the same time (including Muslim, Christian and Parsi family laws), leaving children in those marriages without a clear path to protection. The report calls for harmonising these laws under a single threshold of 18 for all purposes.

Is 18 consistent with Islamic principles?

Equating the age of majority with puberty fixes adulthood on children even as young as 9. Marriage, properly understood, requires the maturity needed to sustain a relationship grounded in mutual care and responsibility, not puberty alone. Parents and the state share a duty to protect children’s interests until that maturity is present.

This is the same distinction the Federal Shariat Court drew when it found that a state setting a minimum age to protect that maturity falls within masalih mursalah, the safeguarding of public interest, and is consistent with the Quran and Sunnah.

Pakistan is not the first Muslim-majority country to face this question, and several others have already settled it in favour of 18 or higher. Egypt and Kuwait set the minimum age of marriage at 18 for both sexes and prohibit the registration of any marriage below that age. Tunisia, Indonesia, and Turkey set a minimum of 18 or higher. Jordan and Iraq permit judicial exceptions below 18, but maintain an absolute floor below which no marriage can be authorised under any circumstance.

What do the CRC and CEDAW Committees say?

Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1990 and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1996. Both committees have reviewed Pakistan’s record on child marriage closely, and their findings describe genuine progress alongside issues that require more work.

When the Committee on the Rights of the Child examined Pakistan’s progress in January 2026, it welcomed the child marriage restraint acts passed in Islamabad Capital Territory and Balochistan as notable legislative progress. In the same set of observations, it raised concern about recent judgements by the Lahore High Court and the Islamabad High Court that had validated the marriages of 15-year-old girls on the basis of puberty, and about the continued legal permissibility of child marriage in parts of the country. The Committee recommended that Pakistan develop a comprehensive law on children’s rights, close the legislative gaps that still allow child marriage in some provinces, and ensure consistent enforcement throughout the country.

The CEDAW Committee in 2020 raised a related but distinct concern: that the minimum age of marriage at the time was 16 for women and 18 for men. It recommended that Pakistan amend the Child Marriage Restraint Act to set the minimum age at 18 for both sexes, without exception, throughout the country. That recommendation has since been substantially acted upon.

What would a judgement against the Child Marriage Restraint Act mean?

Since the 18th Constitutional Amendment, marriage law has largely been a provincial matter. Sindh set 18 as the minimum age for both sexes in 2013; Punjab, Islamabad, and Balochistan followed in 2025 and 2026. Last month, Pakistan’s government convened a workshop to launch a National Framework to End Child Marriage, a sign of commitment at the highest levels of government to ending this harmful practice nationwide.

Taken together, these reforms have brought Pakistan closer to its own international commitments under the CRC and CEDAW, and closer to the position most of the world, and a growing number of Muslim-majority states, has already settled on.

Child marriage is a form of violence against girls, rooted in patriarchy and gendered norms as much as in age based vulnerability and cultural tradition. Keeping 18 as the minimum age of marriage, without exception, is what affords girls and women the protection the law is meant to provide. A potential judgement from the Federal Shariat Court that the minimum age set by federal law is inconsistent with Islamic injunctions would not remain confined to Islamabad. It would risk slowing progress in provinces currently moving toward 18 as the minimum age, and could weaken protections that already exist in law elsewhere in the country, at the precise moment when Pakistan has been building toward a single, consistent standard.

Last updated: 25 June 2026

Equality Now works with partners across South Asia and around the world to end harmful practices, including child and forced marriage. We lead global campaigns against harmful practices, pushing for states to enact and implement effective laws and to be held accountable to their international obligations. Collaborating with our network of regional partners, we strengthen grassroots efforts by amplifying the voices of local activists to leaders, policymakers, and citizens everywhere.