Pakistan's Sindh orders inquiry into monsoon child brides

A Pakistan provincial government has ordered an inquiry into child marriages in areas affected by floods in 2022 following an exclusive AFP story on the subject.

Pakistan's high rate of marriages for underage girls had been inching lower in recent years, but after unprecedented floods in 2022 rights workers warned that such weddings were on the rise due to climate-driven economic insecurity.

In a report published on August 16, AFP spoke to girls married at the ages of 13 and 14 in exchange for money at villages hard hit by the floods in Sindh province.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has ordered an inquiry into the matter, his spokesman Rasheed Channa told AFP.

"The Chief Minister wants to understand the social impact of the rains on the people of this area. After the report is submitted, he will visit the area and generate recommendations.

"My personal opinion is that there has always been this tradition of early marriages, but the floods have made people very desperate."

In the village of Khan Mohammad Mallah, 45 underage girls have been married since last year's monsoon rains -- 15 of them in May and June this year, the NGO Sujag Sansar told AFP.

The summer monsoon between July and September is vital for the livelihoods of millions of farmers and food security, but scientists say climate change is making them heavier and longer, raising the risk of landslides, floods and long-term crop damage.

"This has led to a new trend of 'monsoon brides'," said Mashooque Birhmani, the founder of Sujag Sansar, which works with religious scholars to combat child marriage.

Many villages in the agricultural belt of Sindh have not recovered from the 2022 floods, which plunged a third of the country underwater, displaced millions and ruined harvests.

"Before the 2022 rains, there was no such need to get girls married so young in our area," 65-year-old village elder Mai Hajani told AFP.