Today, climate change and its impact are the latest top-selling products in the social development industry. There is respect and admiration, even for those who work to spread awareness and mitigation tools, whether as a business or a donor-supported startup. Yet, it remains a concern for a few not-so-smart or pragmatic practitioners like myself, as I notice the absence of concerns, clatter, and clamour about the far less than required degrees of preparedness for disaster prevention, reduction, and non-readiness to label man-made personal interest-driven catastrophes as natural disasters. The mainstream media, particularly TV, continue to blackout the voices of the sufferers. Taking a random look at the series of low-scale and massive emergencies, right from the earthquake in 2005 to the floods in 2022 in Pakistan, any honest heart and informed eye will get the response. The money and media attention allocated to the rehabilitation of the survivors in all humanitarian situations never matches the pay and perks of the officials in charge from various institutions and the placement of their cronies and family members, and the gimmicks on the idiot box and frivolous trends on Twitter.
There are multi-faceted sequences at many levels of ill-intended and/or half-baked interventions in any humanitarian scenario. One that particularly interests me and is too close to my heart and head is gender-based violence (GBV). GBV is not a singular entity but has many manifestations and complex combinations. I wish to draw the attention of concerned donors, technical and aid agencies, civil society platforms, and public sector organizations towards the relationship between dowry systems and “girl-child marriage” in the wake of any emergency. More than two decades ago, while initiating my pioneering work against dowry violence in Pakistan, I also authored papers and initiated advocacy on the misnomer “child marriage”. I strongly argued that there is a need to find a new language as there is no such thing as child marriage; it is simply abuse. Additionally, if this forced and exploiting arrangement is termed marriage, then its termination too would have problematic impacts. Imagine the “child marriage” of a 9-year-old adolescent girl to an old man and its annulment making this child girl a divorcee. Since unpaid activism without any lobby in the relevant corridors of power and influence seldom gets any response, my(non-elite) voice too was doggedly dismissed. We kept on hearing impressive stories of change and empowerment of women through funded films, glossy reports, expensive seminars, and beyond.
The everlasting questions remain the correct and complete implementation, the rule of law, and equality before the law.
Owing to the collective ineffectiveness of a good volume of aid and continued efforts, no matter how small and never newsworthy, of a few dedicated activists, committed officials in international agencies, and relatively better parliamentarians and bureaucrats in terms of honesty, listening skills, and compassion, sometimes a silver lining keeps appearing in otherwise dark scenarios. As a result, Pakistan gets some good pro-women laws and (short-term) projects. The everlasting questions remain the correct and complete implementation, the rule of law, and equality before the law.
One of the most highlighted issues in recent years is “girl child marriage” and the emphasis on abolishing underage marriages. All regions of Pakistan have achieved varied levels of progress on this issue. Currently, only the Sindh government has a law against the marriage of any person under 18 years. For all other regions, the prevailing law sets the legal marriage age at 16 for girls and 18 for boys. During and after any disaster, there has always been a surge in the “marriage” of underage girls who are somehow proven to be 18 years or above if the matter gains legal support through any non-profit or individual activist or social media influencer. This also points out the loopholes in our birth registration system. While underage so-called marriage should never be justified, even if there is no study showing the economic benefits of delayed marriages, simply because it is not only an act of human rights violation but health, including mental health, hazards too. A pertinent question could be why parents agree to the idea of marrying their school-going girls. There are different reasons (that should never be used as an excuse to legitimize this complex spectrum of GBV) that need to be heard, understood, and solved by the State. And what are those reasons: The reasons are neither always overt nor in isolation but act together in random order. One word that covers all reasons is the centuries-old, ingrained patriarchy. Due to this, low socioeconomic status is assigned to females. Therefore, a daughter rather than a son is preferred for any financial transaction. There are reported cases of “marriages” of a girl child to an aged truck driver or relatively wealthier older man in the village to cover the cost of transportation due to floods. Son preference is also a trademark of the patriarchal belt of Asia. Tsunami stories also include mentally deranged mothers who made the “choice” of letting their girls go and keeping boys while “swimming” upstream. Honour, unlike inheritance, has female custodians. The fear of the loss of honour escalates in displacement and a camp setting. The culture of dowry systems (the younger the girl, the lesser the burden of dowry demand or expenses on a wedding) also plays a significant role. I have not inserted statistics on purpose. Needs, not numbers, should matter. It is time to revamp our thinking patterns and instead of impressing higher officials with infographics and jargon, talk about humane approaches. At times there are simpler solutions. To me, this specific form of an apparently complex GBV is preventable provided those who are at the helm of affairs are serious about it.
The writer is a lone warrior and a freethinker and tweets @Apna_Wallet