Rising ‘Monsoon Brides’ Trend in Pakistan: Economic Hardships Fuel Child Marriages Amidst Climate Crisis

DADU: As monsoon rains loomed over Pakistan, 14-year-old Shamila and her 13-year-old sister Amina were married off in exchange for money, a desperate move by their parents to survive the impending floods.

“I was happy to hear I was getting married… I thought my life would become easier,” Shamila shared after her wedding to a man twice her age, hoping for a more prosperous future. “But I have nothing more. And with the rain, I fear I will have even less, if that is possible.”

While Pakistan had been making progress in reducing child marriages, the devastating 2022 floods have reversed this trend, leading to a surge in underage marriages due to climate-driven economic insecurity. Rights workers warn that the worsening climate crisis is pushing more families into desperate situations, forcing them to marry off their daughters for financial survival.

The summer monsoon, crucial for millions of farmers and the nation’s food security, has become increasingly unpredictable and destructive due to climate change, causing landslides, floods, and long-term crop damage. In the agricultural regions of Sindh, many villages are still struggling to recover from the 2022 floods, which submerged a third of the country, displaced millions, and destroyed vital crops.

“This has led to a new trend of ‘monsoon brides’,” explained Mashooque Birhmani, founder of the NGO Sujag Sansar, which collaborates with religious scholars to combat child marriage. “Families will find any means of survival. The first and most obvious way is to give their daughters away in marriage in exchange for money.”

Birhmani noted that child marriages have spiked in villages like Dadu district, one of the areas hardest hit by the floods. In Khan Mohammad Mallah village, where Shamila and Amina were married in a joint ceremony in June, 45 underage girls have been married off since the last monsoon—15 of them in just May and June of this year.

“Before the 2022 rains, there was no such need to get girls married so young in our area,” said village elder Mai Hajani, 65. “They would work on the land, make rope for wooden beds, the men would be busy with fishing and agriculture. There was always work to be done.”

Parents admitted to AFP that they rushed their daughters into marriage to save them from poverty, usually in exchange for money. Shamila’s mother-in-law, Bibi Sachal, revealed they paid Rs200,000 to Shamila’s parents—a significant sum in a region where most families survive on around one dollar a day.

Najma Ali, who was married at 14 in 2022, initially felt excited about becoming a wife but now faces harsh realities. “My husband gave my parents Rs250,000 for our wedding. But it was on loan (from a third party) that he has no way of paying back now,” she said. “Now I am back home with a husband and a baby because we have nothing to eat.”

The village, located on the banks of a canal in the Main Nara Valley, is barren, with no fish left in the polluted water. “We had lush rice fields where girls used to work,” said Hakim Zaadi, 58, Najma’s mother. “They would grow many vegetables, which are all dead now because the water in the ground is poisonous.”

UNICEF has reported “significant strides” in reducing child marriage, but warns that extreme weather events increase the risk. “We would expect to see an 18 percent increase in the prevalence of child marriage, equivalent to erasing five years of progress,” the organization said in a report following the 2022 floods.

Dildar Ali Sheikh, 31, had considered marrying off his eldest daughter Mehtab while living in an aid camp after the floods. “When I was there, I thought to myself ‘we should get our daughter married so at least she can eat and have basic facilities’,” he told AFP.

Mehtab was just 10 years old. “The night I decided to get her married, I couldn’t sleep,” said her mother, Sumbal Ali Sheikh, who married at 18.

An intervention by Sujag Sansar postponed the wedding, allowing Mehtab to enroll in a sewing workshop where she earns a small income while continuing her education. However, with each monsoon rain, Mehtab fears that her postponed wedding may soon become a reality.