Court halts five child marriages

By Mubashir Zaidi
BBC News, Islamabad

Women and young girls are often used in the practise of 'vani'

Pakistan's top constitutional court has intervened to stop the marriages of five minor girls which were arranged in order to settle a tribal dispute.

The case centres around the custom of "vani" in which blood feuds are settled through forced marriages, often at the behest of a tribal gathering or jirga.

The girls, from Sindh province, are all between 12 months and five years old.

The supreme court ordered police to investigate the case within two weeks and arrest jirga members if need be.

Compensation

The case involves a blood feud between two tribes in the Kashmor district of Sindh province dating back to 1997.

Last month, a jirga allegedly ordered two brothers from one tribe to allow their five daughters to be married to members of another tribe in compensation for an alleged misdeed.

A former minister of the Pakistan People's Party who headed the jirga said that he did not order the marriage of underage girls to settle the dispute and was just trying to bring two warring families together.

The Pakistani chief justice said that the "vani" custom appeared to be spreading across the whole country.

The court dealt with a similar case in the same province under which two minor girls were used as compensation in a dispute over buffaloes.

The court expressed anger as to why girls were being given as compensation.

The practise of "vani" is punishable by law in Pakistan with sentences up to 10 years, but no-one has been found guilty of the offence so far.