When the monsoon rains were about to begin in Pakistan, 14-year-old Shamila and her 13-year-old sister Amina were married off in exchange for money. This decision was taken by their parents to help the family survive the threat of floods.
“I was happy to hear I was getting married … I thought my life would be easier now,” Shamila told AFP after her wedding, hoping to have a happy life married to a man twice her age.
“But I have nothing else. And with the rain, I’m afraid I’ll have even less left, if that’s even possible.”
Pakistan’s high rate of underage marriages of girls has declined in recent years, but after unprecedented floods in 2022, human rights activists warn that such marriages are now on the rise due to climate-driven economic insecurity.
The summer monsoon between July and September is crucial to the livelihoods and food security of millions of farmers, but scientists say climate change is causing harvests to become heavier and longer, raising the risk of landslides, flooding and long-term crop damage.
Many villages in Sindh’s agricultural belt have not recovered from the 2022 floods, which inundated a third of the country, displaced millions of people and destroyed crops.
“This has given rise to a new trend of ‘monsoon brides,'” said Mashooq Birhamani, founder of Sujag Sansar, an NGO that works with religious scholars to combat child marriage.
“Families will find any way to survive. The first and most obvious way is to marry off their daughters in exchange for money.”
Birhamani said child marriages had risen sharply in villages of Dadu district, one of the worst-affected areas, since the 2022 floods, which saw lake-like conditions for months.
In Khan Mohammad Mallah village, where Shamila and Amina were married in June, 45 minor girls have become wives since the last monsoon — 15 of them in May and June this year.
“There was no need for girls in our area to be married at such a young age before the 2022 rains,” said Mai Hazani, a 65-year-old village elder.
“They worked the land, making ropes for the wooden beds, the men were busy fishing and farming. There was always work to be done.”
Parents told AFP they marry their daughters off early to save them from poverty, usually receiving money in return.
Shamila’s mother-in-law, Bibi Sachal, said she gave the bride’s parents 200,000 Pakistani rupees ($720) – a large sum in a region where most families survive on about a dollar a day.
“I thought I’d get a lipstick”
Najma Ali was initially swept away by the excitement of becoming a wife when she got married in 2022 at the age of 14 and began living with her in-laws as per Pakistani tradition.
“My husband gave my parents Rs 250,000 for our marriage. But it was a loan (from a third party) which he has no way to repay now,” she said.
“I thought I would get lipstick, make-up, clothes and crockery,” she told AFP, holding her six-month-old baby in her arms.
“Now I am back home with my husband and child because we have nothing to eat.”
Their village, located on the banks of a canal in the main Nara Valley, is barren and there are no fish left in the polluted water – its stench fills the entire area.
“We had lush rice fields where the girls worked,” said Hakim Zadi, 58, a village woman and Najma’s mother.
“They used to grow a lot of vegetables, which are now dead because the water in the ground is poisonous. This has happened especially after 2022,” he said.
“Earlier, girls were not a burden for us. At the age when girls used to be married off, now they have five children and come to live with their parents because their husbands are unemployed.”
‘I want to study’
Child marriage is common in parts of Pakistan, which has the sixth highest number of girls married before the age of 18 in the world, according to government data published in December.
The legal age for marriage ranges from 16 to 18 in different regions, but the law is rarely enforced.
UNICEF reports “significant progress” in reducing child marriage, but evidence shows extreme weather events put girls at risk.
“We expect to see an 18 percent increase in the prevalence of child marriage, equivalent to erasing five years of progress,” a report said after the 2022 floods.
Dildar Ali Sheikh, 31, had planned the wedding of his eldest daughter Mehtab while living in a relief camp after being displaced by the floods.
“When I was there, I thought, ‘We should marry off our daughter so that at least she can get food and basic amenities,'” the daily wage laborer told AFP.
Mehtab was only 10 years old.
“The night I decided to get her married, I couldn’t sleep,” says her mother, Sumbal Ali Sheikh, who was 18 at the time of her marriage.
Thanks to the intervention of the NGO Sujag Sansar, the marriage was postponed and Mehtab was enrolled in a sewing workshop, which helped her earn a little income while continuing her education.
But when the monsoon rains arrive, he begins to fear that his marriage promise will also come.
“I told my father that I want to study,” she said. “I see married girls around me who have a very challenging life and I don’t want that for myself.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
