PAKISTAN

SOCIETY: THE ‘KEPT’ BOYS OF MAURIPUR

Mutee-ur-Rehman 

Published October 19, 2025

 Dawn, EOS

Illustration by Radia Durrani


Saifullah is 10 years old. When his employer — a long-haul truck driver named Bilal — is “in the mood”, the boy says he has no choice but to comply.

Bilal has worked out of Mauripur Truck Stand for three decades, hauling freight across Pakistan’s national highway network. In that time, he has “kept” a succession of young boys as apprentices. Saifullah is the latest.

Sprawling across a hundred acres in western Karachi, the Mauripur stand pulses with diesel fumes and the blare of air horns during peak hours. Trucks bound for routes across Sindh and beyond the province idle between runs. But transport is not the only business conducted here.

A CULTURE OF ABUSE

Within the alleys and repair bays, an entrenched culture of exploitation persists. Child apprentices such as Saifullah become trapped in cycles of underage labour, physical violence and sexual abuse — a pattern child protection advocates say is endemic yet rarely prosecuted.

Wazir, 12, is another of Bilal’s boys. He works under the truck’s mechanic, learning to repair engines and change tires. Both boys clean the cab, fetch tools and perform odd jobs that justify their presence. The work earns them a seat in the truck for long-haul journeys — and keeps them within reach.


Beyond the diesel fumes of Pakistan’s largest truck stand, an entrenched system preys on vulnerable boys. Despite laws against child abuse and prostitution, a culture of complicity allows the exploitation to continue unchecked

The abuse extends beyond individual perpetrators. Multiple drivers at Mauripur engage in similar exploitation, the boys say, and sometimes share access to each other’s apprentices.

Saifullah says refusal brings retaliation — beatings with whatever tool that is at hand. He comes from a family situation he describes only as “troubled” and has nowhere else to go. The daily wage keeps him here. “The rest is just part of the work,” he tells Eos.

It is, by his own assessment, trading one unbearable situation for another.

DEPENDENCY AND GROOMING

An informal, small-scale inquiry conducted by the writer at Karachi’s Mauripur truck stand revealed a recurring theme through anecdotal accounts. A significant number of drivers informally suggested that relationships with young male apprentices served as their primary form of recreation.

Many of these drivers, like Bilal, framed this practice as a necessary compulsion, citing the isolation of long-haul routes and separation from their families. They consistently maintained the relationships were consensual.

However, these same informal discussions suggested a more complex dynamic, indicating that many apprentices, often coming from strained family backgrounds, may perceive these relationships as a source of needed affection and loyalty, complicating the drivers’ narrative of mere necessity.

This sense of a special bond is often reinforced through small, symbolic gestures. For instance, it was noted that apprentices frequently wore the same perfume as their driver, treating it as something unique they shared.

For instance, Saifullah wears a stone ring on his index finger, given to him by Bilal. While it is a size too big, he has adjusted it to his liking and shows it off with great pride. Such gestures appear to help cultivate an intimacy that deepens the driver-apprentice relationship.

This bond, however, often marks the start of a pseudo parent-child relationship, rooted in a painful trauma bond. According to clinical psychologist Dr Tahira Yousaf, this is a powerful attachment where the child, already financially dependent, becomes emotionally dependent on their exploiter. This dynamic makes escape difficult.

THE HIERARCHY OF POWER

Saifullah’s story is a case in point. He came to Karachi from a village in Sindh to financially support his ill father back home. Bilal offered him work and shelter, but the arrangement quickly turned sinister. Within a week, Saifullah was raped and forced into prostitution. Although the first weeks were terrifying, Bilal controlled every aspect of his life — from his food to his contact with family. For Saifullah, there was no way out.

This established relationship creates a rigid hierarchy. The driver holds all the control, while the apprentice, lured by vulnerability, becomes trapped. As these boys mature and wish to escape their exploitation, they find it nearly impossible. Their perceived masculinity within the community is tied to their sexual role; being on the “receiving end” marks them as weak and strips them of authority.

Furthermore, drivers weaponise personal information, threatening to expose the boys to their families and communities if they ever refuse or try to flee. As one apprentice explains, this threat of societal rejection is a powerful tool to ensure compliance.

For some, a degree of acceptance emerges. Wazir complies for the extra money, using it to buy personal items such as sandals. He rationalises the situation as a transactional arrangement, a less painful mindset than acknowledging the abuse and exploitation. When asked if he misses home, he tells Eos, “After what happens here, how can you go home?”

Some boys even frame the statutory rape to be consensual and voluntary, citing both financial gain and personal pleasure. As Saifullah notes, “It’s not a one-way road.” However, this self-justification is one of the most insidious aspects of the phenomenon, as it leads them to see themselves as willing participants rather than victims, thereby preventing them from seeking help or recognising their own abuse.

THE INSTITUTIONAL BLIND EYE

This distorted perception is compounded by systemic failure. While laws like the 2017 Sindh Prohibition of Employment of Children Bill criminalise child prostitution with severe penalties, enforcement is virtually non-existent in areas like Mauripur.

The sexual nature of driver-apprentice relationships is normalised within the trucking community, leading police to turn a blind eye. The boys are often mistaken for family members, deflecting suspicion. It is wilful ignorance, as the culture is well-documented, yet authorities remain complacent, leaving the boys without protection.

A further layer of exploitation is chemical dependency. The trucking environment normalises substance use, with drivers using drugs such as hashish and methamphetamine, locally known as ‘ice’, to stay alert on long journeys. Apprentices are exposed to these substances, along with alcohol, further cementing their dependence.

This culminates in a severe public health crisis. Unprotected sex is the norm, with one estimate — from a study published in the Culture, Health and Sexuality journal in 2014 — suggesting only eight percent of truckers use condoms. A profound lack of awareness about HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI) is pervasive. Bilal, for instance, believes his faith protects him from “Western evils.”

As Dr Yousaf states, without open conversation about these practices, the cycle of exploitation and escalating health risks will continue unchecked.

The writer is a freelance journalist currently pursuing a degree at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. He can be contacted at m.rehman.26317@khi.iba.edu.pk

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 19th, 2025

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BOY BRIDES

Trump, Epstein, and the GOP’s Planned Rape Culture

The question is not why they hid the list. The question is why they need it at all when the ledger is already written in their laws.

As of mid-2025, child marriage remains legal in 37 U.S. states.


From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000.
(Photo: Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)

LONG READ

Jesse Mackinnon
Jul 15, 2025

Common Dreams

By the time the U.S. Justice Department released its memo in July 2025, the faithful were already starting to turn. There was no “client list,” no smoking gun, no perverted cabal of global elites laid bare for public vengeance. What they got instead was a cold government document and a half-mumbled shrug from President Donald Trump, who barely remembered the man everyone else had turned into a folk demon. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” he asked, blinking like he’d just wandered out of a golf simulator.

The betrayal was almost elegant. For years, Trump’s people had promised the black book. Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was on her desk. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel practically branded his political future with it. Counselor to the President of the United Staes Alina Habba promised flight logs and names. And then the punchline: nothing. Or rather, a truckload of documents scrubbed clean and a memo telling the public to move on. The frenzy turned inward. MAGA loyalists melted down on camera. Laura Loomer called for a special counsel. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino stopped showing up for work. Right-wing media turned on itself like rats in a pressure cooker.

But the Epstein file was never the point. The real story was not buried in a locked safe or hidden by the FBI. It was out in the open. It is still out in the open. The political movement that once pledged to drain the swamp has spent its second tour of duty building a legal and bureaucratic fortress around some of the oldest crimes in the book. Modern conservatism has come to rely not just on outrage but on inertia, and nowhere is that more visible than in its handling of child sexual abuse.

We are not talking about a secret ring or coded pizza menus. We are talking about a system that tolerates child marriage in over half the states. A system that forces raped minors to carry pregnancies to term. A system that slashes funding for shelters and trauma counseling. A system that lets rape kits pile up in warehouse back rooms while politicians pose in front of billboards about protecting kids.

This is not a moral failure or a bureaucratic oversight. It is an architecture. It is built from votes, funded by budgets, signed into law by men who say they fear God but fear losing donors more. The Epstein affair may have collapsed in a cloud of whimpering and spin, but what it revealed is far more corrosive than any one man’s crimes. The question is not why they hid the list. The question is why they need it at all when the ledger is already written in their laws.

Legalized Child Marriage as Institutional Abuse

As of mid-2025, child marriage remains legal in 37 U.S. states. In most of these jurisdictions, statutory exceptions allow minors to marry with parental consent or judicial approval. Some states permit marriage for individuals as young as 15. Others lack any explicit minimum age when certain conditions are met. These legal frameworks persist despite growing evidence of their links to coercion, abuse, and lifelong harm.

Missouri serves as a prominent example. Until recently, it permitted minors aged 15 to marry with parental consent. Testimony from survivors has revealed how this legal permission facilitated predatory relationships cloaked in legitimacy. In one case, a girl was married off to a man nearly a decade older, and the marriage became a vehicle for sustained sexual and psychological abuse. Former child brides in Missouri have since called for a statutory minimum age of 18 with no exceptions. Legislative efforts to enact such reforms have repeatedly stalled.

Tennessee offers a more recent and pointed illustration. In 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would have created a new category of marriage not subject to age restrictions. The bill failed under public pressure, but it signaled a continued willingness by some conservative legislators to bypass modern child protection norms. Even when confronted with documentation of exploitation, physical violence, and long-term trauma, these lawmakers often frame the issue around religious liberty and parental authority.

The Epstein affair was never going to end in justice. It was a mirror. What it reflected was not a single man’s sins but a political order that treats predation as a price of stability.

The prevailing rhetoric in these debates centers on traditional family values. Proponents argue that restricting child marriage infringes on the rights of families to make decisions without state interference. In some cases, advocates for maintaining the status quo invoke Christian theological justifications or present marriage as a preferable alternative to state custody. These arguments shift the legal focus away from the vulnerability of the minor and toward the autonomy of adults, particularly parents and religious leaders.

This legal tolerance undermines the enforcement of statutory rape laws. When marriage can be used as a legal shield, older adults who would otherwise face criminal prosecution gain immunity by securing parental consent or exploiting permissive judicial channels. In practice, the marriage license functions as retroactive permission for sexual contact with a minor. Law enforcement agencies are often reluctant to investigate allegations within a legally recognized marriage, even when age discrepancies raise clear concerns.

The persistence of child marriage statutes in conservative-controlled states is not simply a relic of outdated law. It reflects a policy choice. The choice is to preserve adult control over minors, particularly in contexts that reinforce patriarchal and religious hierarchies. In doing so, the state becomes an active participant in the erasure of consent. Legal recognition of these unions confers legitimacy on relationships that, in other contexts, would be subject to prosecution. The result is a bifurcated legal system where a child’s age and rights are contingent on the adult interests surrounding her.
Forced Birth Laws and the Abandonment of Minor Victims

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, state legislatures moved swiftly to implement abortion bans. As of July 2025, 10 states enforce prohibitions with no exceptions for rape or incest. These laws apply equally to adults and minors. In doing so, they erase the distinction between consensual and coerced sexual activity and impose state control over the bodies of children.

The consequences are observable. In Ohio, a 10-year-old girl became pregnant after being raped by a 27-year-old man. Because Ohio law prohibited abortion past six weeks and included no exception for rape, the girl traveled to Indiana to terminate the pregnancy. The physician who provided the abortion was targeted by state officials and subjected to professional disciplinary action. The child’s identity was shielded, but her case became a national flashpoint. No changes were made to Ohio’s statute in response.

In Mississippi, a 13-year-old girl gave birth after being raped by a stranger. Her family, unable to afford travel or secure an out-of-state appointment, watched as the pregnancy advanced. Though state law permitted abortion in cases of rape, it required police reporting and formal certification by the authorities. The procedural burden, combined with lack of local providers, rendered the exception functionally inaccessible. The pregnancy was carried to term. No support infrastructure was provided beyond birth.

In Texas, multiple cases have emerged involving girls under 14 who were raped by family members or acquaintances. One minor received abortion pills through informal networks. Another did not. In that case, the pregnancy continued until birth. In both situations, school staff, health workers, and shelter employees described an atmosphere of legal ambiguity and fear. Providers worried about prosecution for aiding what could be construed as an illegal abortion. Parents feared legal action or custody loss if they sought help out of state.

These laws are not merely restrictive. They are designed to inhibit access through a combination of legal uncertainty, bureaucratic obstruction, and geographic isolation. Requirements for parental consent and judicial bypass impose additional delays. In conservative jurisdictions, judges often refuse bypass requests outright. Clinics have closed. Providers have left. In many counties, no legal abortion services exist. For minors with limited mobility, no resources, and histories of abuse, these constraints function as a full prohibition.

Psychological consequences are profound. Research conducted by trauma specialists indicates that forced pregnancy following sexual assault exacerbates the risk of suicidal ideation, self-injury, and long-term mental illness. Minors compelled to remain pregnant often experience acute dissociation and chronic anxiety. Social workers report increased incidents of runaway behavior, substance use, and refusal to attend school. The medical literature consistently describes these outcomes as preventable harm.

The political response to these outcomes has been largely nonreactive. Elected officials in affected states have declined to revisit statutory language. When presented with specific cases, responses are limited to procedural defenses or deflections. Conservative media outlets often ignore these incidents altogether or question their veracity. State agencies rarely publish disaggregated data on minor pregnancies resulting from assault. In legislative hearings, victims are not called to testify.

This absence of acknowledgment is not accidental. The architecture of forced birth laws depends on abstraction. It requires a conceptual fetus without context, a generic moral narrative without victims. The insertion of real children into that framework exposes its contradictions. In response, the system silences or discredits those who do not fit the script.

The effect is the systematic abandonment of minor victims. The state declines to intervene in the act of abuse, imposes control over the outcome, and then withdraws when support is needed. In doing so, it transforms rape from a crime to a reproductive event and reclassifies children as bearers of state policy. The result is not a deviation from conservative thought. It is one of its clearest expressions.

The Systematic Dismantling of Survivor Support

In early 2025, the Trump administration released a proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 that included significant funding reductions for agencies and programs supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence. The Office on Violence Against Women removed all open funding opportunities from its website. This move came amid a broader effort to eliminate what the administration referred to as “woke” or ideologically driven programs. Internal Department of Justice (DOJ) memoranda confirmed that existing grant language was being revised to align with White House policy preferences, with particular scrutiny directed toward anything referencing diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI).

The proposed budget eliminated the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. That agency had previously overseen funding for rape prevention and domestic violence education through the DELTA and RPE programs. These initiatives provided critical infrastructure for community-based interventions, including education campaigns, prevention training, and partnerships with local law enforcement. Their elimination removed a core pillar of upstream support.

At the same time, DOJ grant freezes disrupted downstream services. Nonprofit organizations across the country reported immediate and severe impacts. In Ohio, the Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center announced potential layoffs of its court advocates and a reduction in emergency shelter capacity. In Washington D.C., House of Ruth stated it was experiencing multiple levels of new scrutiny when seeking reimbursement for already-approved expenditures. Organizations were directed to pause hiring and halt finalization of pending grant applications. Many could not meet payroll obligations for March.

Survivors of violence were displaced not by explicit prohibition but by the withdrawal of every practical means of assistance.

In Philadelphia, Women Against Abuse reported difficulties accessing funding for its LGBTQ-specific services. In Washington state, the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center prepared to end its legal advocacy program entirely. In both cases, staff warned that client wait times for crisis response had doubled within a single quarter. Administrators noted that many of their clients were minors or undocumented women who lacked other options. Reductions in services were expected to increase reliance on emergency departments and law enforcement, systems ill-equipped to handle trauma recovery or long-term safety planning.

The effects extended to rural programs as well. In smaller counties, shelters funded primarily through DOJ block grants began closing intake lists. Survivors were told to wait or relocate. Legal assistance for restraining orders and custody cases became difficult to obtain. Mobile crisis units were discontinued. Hospital advocates who had previously accompanied victims during forensic exams were no longer available. Each removed position created a compounding absence in systems already operating at capacity.

The budget’s emphasis on eliminating federal programs associated with DEI goals shaped the targeting of these cuts. While many victim services agencies did not explicitly advertise such language, internal reviewers flagged any mention of racial disparities, LGBTQ outreach, or culturally specific programming as potentially noncompliant with revised priorities. A senior DOJ official, speaking anonymously, stated that the Office on Violence Against Women had been instructed to avoid “risk exposure” by minimizing support for identity-based initiatives.

Although the Violence Against Women Act had been reauthorized in 2022 with bipartisan support, its implementation now faced procedural obstruction. Staff who had expanded under the prior administration were informed they might be subject to termination. A memo from the Office of Management and Budget described plans for agency-wide attrition. Staff with less than three years of tenure were given no assurances. Departments were instructed to prepare for reduced grant-making capacity over the following two fiscal cycles.

The dismantling of support systems was neither sudden nor undocumented. It unfolded through administrative erasure, funding attrition, and legal recalibration. Survivors of violence were displaced not by explicit prohibition but by the withdrawal of every practical means of assistance. Those left behind were often the least able to navigate the resulting gaps. For these individuals, the state offered no replacement. Instead, it imposed a bureaucratic silence where aid had once existed. The outcome was a deliberate contraction of the public obligation to protect.

Forensic Neglect and the Rape Kit Crisis

Despite the adoption of sexual assault kit tracking systems in over 30 states, the United States continues to face a persistent national backlog. Tens of thousands of kits remain untested in police storage facilities, hospital evidence rooms, and crime labs. Many of these kits have been stored for years without analysis. Others were never submitted for processing due to departmental triage, lost documentation, or discretionary decisions by investigating officers. While some states have mandated timelines for submission and testing, enforcement mechanisms remain weak, and compliance is inconsistent.

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, a federal program designed to support evidence processing and data coordination, has received limited attention under the current administration. Although the initiative has produced measurable results in jurisdictions that prioritized its implementation, recent Justice Department actions suggest a deprioritization of forensic reform. The DOJ has declined to expand funding, and the program has not featured in recent public safety messaging. Internal budget documents indicate that grants for kit testing were not included in the administration’s revised funding priorities for fiscal year 2026.

As a result, survivors often experience long delays in receiving updates about their cases. Some discover years later that their evidence was never tested. Others are notified only after investigations are closed due to expired statutes of limitation. Communication is sporadic and mediated by agencies with limited resources and unclear protocols. Victims who attempt to inquire directly are frequently redirected or denied information outright. In some states, survivors have been required to submit formal public records requests to learn whether their kits were processed.

These delays compromise prosecutions. When evidence is eventually tested, witnesses may be unreachable, suspects may no longer be within the jurisdiction, and memory degradation may weaken the reliability of victim testimony. Prosecutors, facing caseload pressures and limited bandwidth, often decline to pursue cases that were mishandled in their early stages. Defense attorneys use the lag in testing to undermine credibility or introduce procedural challenges. The net effect is a collapse in accountability long before any trial begins.

The failures of evidence handling disproportionately affect marginalized populations. In rural areas, law enforcement agencies lack personnel and funding to maintain evidence integrity or pursue cold cases. In urban centers, kits from Black, Indigenous, and Latina victims are more likely to go untested. Multiple studies have found that law enforcement officers are more likely to doubt the credibility of victims from low-income neighborhoods, undocumented communities, or those with previous contact with social services. These judgments influence whether evidence is submitted for analysis and whether cases receive investigative follow-up.

The forensic crisis is compounded by data gaps. Many states do not track the number of untested kits in private hospitals or non-mandated reporting facilities. Others exclude kits from the backlog if they were collected before a specific year. The result is an undercounting that obscures the true scope of institutional failure. Federal authorities have not established a national registry or auditing mechanism to standardize reporting. This lack of oversight permits continued neglect without consequence.

Efforts to reform the system remain fragmented. Some jurisdictions have implemented notification protocols to alert survivors when their kits are tested or their cases reopened. Others have passed legislation requiring mandatory submission timelines. These efforts, however, rely on sustained funding and political will. In the current policy environment, neither can be assumed.

The accumulation of untested rape kits reflects more than a bureaucratic shortfall. It reveals a hierarchy of value embedded in forensic practice. Victims whose experiences align with prosecutorial priorities receive attention. Those who fall outside those norms are left in limbo. The backlog is not only a logistical failure. It is a measure of who is deemed worthy of pursuit.

The Performance of Protection and the Reality of Harm

In the contemporary conservative lexicon, few terms have gained as much political traction as “groomer.” Once associated narrowly with criminal prosecutions of adults who built relationships with children for the purpose of sexual exploitation, the term has been repurposed as a generalized insult. It now targets a wide array of perceived ideological enemies, from public school teachers to LGBTQ advocates to librarians. In its current usage, “groomer” does not denote a specific criminal act. It signifies dissent from cultural orthodoxy. It functions rhetorically rather than descriptively.

This shift is not accidental. The term has become a central instrument in the conservative culture war arsenal. It is applied liberally to any policy, institution, or public figure that departs from a narrow conception of sexual and gender norms. The invocation of grooming no longer requires evidence. It requires proximity to subjects deemed socially suspect. Teachers who support inclusive sex education, therapists who serve queer youth, and public health professionals working with at-risk adolescents are all subject to the accusation. The result is not the exposure of exploitation. It is the expansion of suspicion.

The logic underpinning this rhetorical turn is strategic. By collapsing the distinction between ideological disagreement and criminal intent, the conservative movement recasts public discourse as a permanent battlefield of moral danger. In this framework, policy is secondary. What matters is posture. The capacity to signal vigilance becomes more important than the provision of safety. The accusation becomes the protection. The spectacle replaces the intervention.

By focusing public energy on the symbolic boundaries of morality, policymakers insulate themselves from accountability for structural abandonment.

This performance obscures the absence of actual safeguards for children. While conservative figures warn of drag queens and inclusive curricula, they vote against background check expansions for youth workers. They resist efforts to create national child abuse registries that include religious institutions. They block legislation to raise the minimum age of marriage. They eliminate funding for school counselors and after-school programs. They cut budgets for child protective services and reduce oversight of private adoption and foster care networks.

There is no contradiction here. The performance is the policy. Protection is not measured in outcomes. It is measured in volume. The louder the accusation, the less scrutiny is applied to legislative choices. Policy failure is neutralized by narrative substitution. When a child is raped and forced to give birth, the story is not told. When a teacher reads a picture book about diverse families, the story is told at volume. One incident is silent law. The other is national scandal.

The political value of outrage lies in its ability to redirect attention. Material neglect becomes invisible behind symbolic noise. The passage of laws criminalizing drag performances near schools draws headlines. The failure to fund rape crisis centers does not. By focusing public energy on the symbolic boundaries of morality, policymakers insulate themselves from accountability for structural abandonment. The child becomes a rhetorical device. She exists in theory rather than in law.

This asymmetry is visible in legislative activity. Since 2022, Republican-controlled legislatures have introduced hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ speech, education content, and library access. Fewer than 10 bills have addressed forensic backlog reform. Even fewer have advanced. Proposed federal legislation to protect minors from online exploitation has repeatedly failed due to concerns about regulation of private companies. At the same time, multiple states have attempted to prosecute school staff for discussing gender identity under “grooming” statutes. The alignment is clear. Threats are defined ideologically. Interventions are reserved for performance.

Media infrastructure amplifies this distortion. Conservative news outlets and online influencers produce continuous content warning of threats posed by social workers, librarians, and drag performers. The framing consistently positions adults who support youth autonomy as predators. At the same time, actual cases of child sexual abuse in religious, athletic, and political institutions are downplayed or reframed. The function of this narrative is not to inform. It is to sustain a moral panic that legitimizes surveillance and censorship while diverting attention from systemic failures.

This process also redefines harm. Under the current paradigm, harm is not measured by suffering or injury. It is measured by deviation from normative identity. A child exposed to age-appropriate information about gender is framed as endangered. A child raped and forced to carry a pregnancy is not framed at all. She exists outside the moral narrative. Her pain is illegible because it does not confirm the ideological premise. She does not symbolize anything useful. She is inconvenient.

This redefinition produces policy that protects ideology rather than people. It enshrines the fiction that surveillance and restriction produce safety. It displaces accountability by substituting criminalization for care. The result is a system in which the primary targets of protective legislation are not predators but professionals. Teachers, counselors, and medical providers are monitored more closely than the men marrying minors or the judges enabling child pregnancies. The apparatus of protection becomes an apparatus of control.

This structure is not malfunctioning. It is performing as designed. The emphasis on symbolic enforcement over material assistance ensures that power remains centered. Actual protections would require redistribution. They would require funding, oversight, and transparency. They would require confronting the institutions most closely aligned with conservative authority: churches, courts, families. That confrontation is not forthcoming. Instead, the state protects the ideology of protection while abandoning the child.

The cumulative effect is institutionalized harm. Systems nominally built to safeguard children instead categorize them. They are either politically useful or they are not. Those who conform to the narrative of victimhood receive visibility without assistance. Those who contradict it receive neither. The performance of protection absorbs public attention. The reality of harm proceeds without interruption.

This disconnect is not unique to recent years. It has precedent in every era of moral panic. What is distinct in the current moment is the speed and reach of narrative enforcement. Digital media enables rapid mobilization around symbolic events. Legislation follows quickly. Meanwhile, data on actual abuse, assault, and neglect remains underreported and underanalyzed. The disparity between visible outrage and invisible harm grows wider. The system becomes harder to map and easier to perform.

The result is a hollow institution of child protection. It possesses language without infrastructure, law without care, and policy without contact. It functions as a mirror reflecting ideology back to its authors. The child at the center of the performance is not protected. She is used. The system that claims to speak for her leaves her undocumented, unsupported, and unacknowledged. This is not a gap in the system. It is the system.

A Coherent System, Not a Series of Failures

This is not the result of a broken machine. It is the machine.

Child marriage laws that legalize statutory rape. Forced birth mandates that turn trauma into state policy. Rape crisis centers shuttered by budget design. Evidence kits rotting in closets. Drag queens banned from libraries while judges greenlight the weddings of 15-year-olds to grown men. None of this happens by accident. The patterns are too consistent, the outcomes too aligned. This is not a case of good intentions gone astray or bureaucratic confusion. It is a deliberate configuration of legal tools designed to shield abusers and discipline the abused.

The architecture holds. What looks like hypocrisy from the outside is strategy from within. It is not a contradiction to scream about “protecting children” while erasing them from legislation, data, and policy. It is not a glitch that the same people who ban books on puberty also block efforts to process rape kits. It is not ironic that the man whose administration claimed to be exposing Epstein’s secrets ended up presiding over their burial. It is structural.

The Epstein file was never about closure. It was about control. It served as a pressure valve, a vessel for all the anxiety and suspicion the base could not voice elsewhere. But when the promised reckoning finally came, it was blank pages and black ink. No fireworks. No arrests. Just a memo and a shrug. The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of meaning.

Because while they waited for the names to drop, the rest of the machine kept humming. Pregnant children were denied care. Shelters lost funding. Backlogs grew. Survivors disappeared into legal limbo. And the same men who had built their brand on outrage offered nothing but slogans and deflection. The spectacle of protection kept playing. But behind the curtain, the laws were doing exactly what they were designed to do.

It is easy to mock the true believers who spent years convinced that justice was one release away. But they were right about one thing. There is a network. It is not secret. It is written into the statutes and reinforced by the budgets. It lives in the votes cast to stall reforms and the speeches given to demonize victims. The rot is not hidden. It is codified.

The question now is not whether the system will be exposed. It already has been. The question is whether people are willing to see what has been made plainly visible. To understand that the policy scaffolding of modern conservatism is not a malfunctioning child safety program. It is a functioning disciplinary regime. Its purpose is not to protect the vulnerable. It is to sort them. To elevate the compliant and erase the inconvenient.

The Epstein affair was never going to end in justice. It was a mirror. What it reflected was not a single man’s sins but a political order that treats predation as a price of stability. The client list doesn’t need to be released. The clients wrote the laws. The machine is working.


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Jesse Mackinnon
Jesse MacKinnon is a high school history teacher running for Congress in California’s 10th District. He is challenging a sitting Democratic incumbent in the primary because of congressional Democrats’ unwillingness to meaningfully oppose the Trump administration.
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Save the girls

Editorial 

Published May 31, 2025 

DAWN


SOME traditions that hinder individual progress are a heavy cross for society to bear. In Pakistan’s deeply patriarchal environment, where a female child’s agency is determined by her biological age, President Asif Zardari’s assent to the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Bill, 2025, despite resistance from the Council of Islamic Ideology — which said that classifying under-18 marriages as rape was in conflict with religious law — deserves applause. Pakistan, where some 19m girls are married off before they turn 18, is home to the sixth highest number of child brides in the world. Almost half of these youngsters become pregnant before the age of 18, and a mere 13pc complete secondary school. The bill is now law; however, its desperately needed implementation will depend on the government’s political commitment to safeguarding the girl child’s right to health, education and opportunities to realise their potential.

The lethal mix of regressive customs and socioeconomic distress leads to early marriage. The new video campaign from Unicef, featuring its National Ambassador for Child Rights, actor Saba Qamar, is a timely move that promises to reach scores, open minds and drive change. It encourages society to question the practice, spells out the consequences of underage nuptials for girls and calls for the empowerment and protection of young females in Pakistan. Child marriage is no child’s play; it means lost childhoods, vulnerability to domestic violence, death during childbirth, poor health and even cervical cancer; the second most common cancer among females between 15 and 44 years. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Pakistan cannot afford lethargy. It is also hoped that lawmakers will not allow conservative sections to hold constitutional liberties, including the safety and dignity of women and children, hostage to their whims. The CII has an advisory role, and there should be no pressure on lawmakers to comply with all its wishes.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2025

When the Earth Heats Up: Zunaira Baloch and the Human Cost of Climate Change in Balochistan

by Zeeshan Nasir / March 17th, 2025

They say only bad news from Balochistan makes the headlines–Pakistan’s largest and most impoverished province marred in a decades long insurgency. The local newspapers are flooded with the news of people being killed in bomb blasts, target killings and the loss of lives in incidents of terrorism. However, amid this backdrop of turmoil, a problem that is just as terrible is subtly developing: climate change. Its perennial consequences are changing the lives of women and children, particularly in the remote and underprivileged parts of Balochistan.

Noora Ali, 14, was oblivious to the temperature shifts because she had grown up in Turbat, a city around 180 kilometres Southwest of Gwadar, the center of CPEC( China-Pakistan Economic Corridor)–a bilateral project to would facilitate trade between China and Pakistan valued at $46 billion. There was frequent flooding during the monsoon season and blazing heatwaves during the summer, with temperatures rising above 51 centigrade. Compared to other cities in Balochistan, Turbat experiences horrible summers and typical winters. As a result, the majority of wealthy families in the city travel to Gwadar, Quetta, or Karachi during the sweltering summers and return to Turbat during the winters. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) moved Noora’s father, who works there, to the neighboring Coastal city of Gwadar in 2022.

In February of 2022, the sea seemed calmed while boats of the fishermen busily dotted the waters of the Padi Zir (Gwadar’s West bay). It was a typical Thursday morning when rain started pouring down. The rain was so intense that the sea became wild. The roads were washed away, bridges collapsed, streets were inundated with flood water, and the port city became completely disconnected from the rest of the country. Back in Turbat, her ancestral hometown was also submerged under flood water.

Noora had also heard from her schoolmates that Gwadar and Turbat had never experienced such heavy and intense rainfall before. She knew and felt that the temperature of her native city was rising and that Gwadar beneath flood water didn’t seem normal. “This is due to climate change,” her elder brother tells her. At the age of 14, most youth in Pakistan’s Balochistan have no idea what climate change and global warming are, but they are already feeling it impacts.

Like Noora, thousands of children in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, and Afghanistan are at the risk of climate related disasters, as per the UNICEF 2021 Children’s Climate Risk Index. The report further reiterates that children in these countries have vigorously been exposed to devastating air pollution and aggressive heatwaves, with 6 million children confronting implacable floods that lashed across these countries in the July of 2024.

On November 11 and 22, 2024, over 20 youths urged the world leaders to come up with plans to mitigate the impacts of climate change on children at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among those 20 resolute children was 14-years-old Zunaira Qayyum Baloch, representing the 241.5 million children and women of Pakistan.

Dressed in her traditional Balochi attire, with a radiant smile and resolute in her commitment, Zunaira Qayyum Baloch has startled everyone. Hailing from the far-flung district of Hub in the Southwest of the Pakistan’s Balochistan, Mrs. Baloch went to represent the children of a country whose carbon footprint is next to zero, yet suffering some of the worst climate-related disasters. Her message to world leaders was clear: step up and combat climate-induced inequalities, particularly those affecting women and children.

She had always remained conscious about the changing climate in her city, observing the floods of 2022 that had wrecked havoc in Hub Chowki, initiating awareness programmes and youth advocacy guide training in her home city to advocate for girls right to education and climate change.

“After my father passed away, my mother became the sole breadwinner. She helped us get an education and met all our requirements,” Zunaira explains. “During the catastrophic rains of 2022, an incident changed my perspective on climate change. Rain water had accumulated in the roof of our home and streets were flooded with water. The destruction was so overwhelming, and I realised that such events were no longer rare but increasing constantly.”

Zunaira Baloch basically hails from the Zehri town of the Khuzdar district. With her journey starting from the Zehri town of Balochistan, she became completely determined to make a difference–initiating awareness drives in her community and educating the people particularly children about climate resilience.

During the COP29, she expressed her concerns with the experts about how Pakistan, particularly Balochistan has been detrimentally affected by climate disasters like frequent floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and droughts. Lamenting that climate change was a child-rights crisis, she told the world how changes in the climate had jeopardised the lives of millions of women and children throughout the world.

Asking the world leaders to join determined children like her to combat climate change, she addressed them in the COP29: “Climate change matters to me, and it should matter to you too.”

Both Noora and Zunaira are children’s of a backward region of the world, grappling with the harrowing reality of climate change. Given that Noora represents those children unaware of the technicalities of climate change, Zunaira is a resolute hope for Balochistan, leading children like Noora to recognize and combat the stark reality of climate crisis.

Stark Reality of the Past

Bibi Dureen, 80, is a witness of how climate is continuously transforming. With wrinkles on her face and a pointed nose, she hails from the outskirts of the Kech district in a town called Nasirabad.

“The seasons are changing,” she says, her voice laced with sorrow. “The heatwaves have become more aggressive and floods are common. It all started in 1998 in Turbat. Then in 2007, a devastating flood destroyed our homes, date palm trees, livestock–and worst of all, it took lives.” She pauses, her wrinkled hands trembling.

As she talks to me in front of her thatched cottage, through which sunlight streams in, tears well up in her eyes as she recalls a haunting childhood memory. “I was a small child at that time. It was a pitch-black night and the rain was pouring down mercilessly when a man came shouting that the flood water had reached the fields.” She exclaims, “My mother, desperate to save what little we had, sent her only son, Habib, 16–our family’s only breadwinner–to find the only cow we had in the fields. Neither the cow nor Habib came back. Later some men found his dead body in the jungle.”

In June 2007, when the Cyclone Yemyin hit the coast of Balochistan, it wrought unprecedented damage to the province, particularly Turbat, Pasni and Ormara. It rendered 50,000 homeless within 24 hours, including children. According to reports 800,000 were affected and 24 went missing.

The 2022 floods had a devastating impact across Pakistan, Balochistan being one of the hardest-hit. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) reported that 528 children had died nationwide, 336 from Balochistan.

Tragedy struck again in 2024 when torrential rains engulfed 32 districts of Balochistan, particularly the port city of Gwadar and Kech district. The PDMA put the death toll at 170, 55 of which were children.

These statistics highlight how urgently appropriate plans and proper strategies for disaster preparedness and loss mitigation in Balochistan must be developed. While extreme weather events such as floods become more common, the need to fight climate change has never been greater.

The Double Crisis Facing Girls: Heatwaves, period poverty

Regions in Balochistan have seen severe heatwaves in the past few decades. In May 2017, the mercury rose to a record breaking 53.5 centigrade in Turbat, making the district the second hottest locale in 2017 after Mitribah, Kuwait. During heatwaves, cases of fainting and health-related illness among residents, particularly among children are common. According to a 2023 report by the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Balochistan has seen a 1.8°C rise in average temperature over the past three decades, leading to longer and harsher heatwaves.

Dr Sammi Parvaz, a gynaecologist at the teaching hospital in Turbat, relates that rising temperatures in the district not only contribute to higher dropout rates among school-age girls, but their menstrual cycle is also affected.

“According to the recent research of the National Institute of Health (NIH), menstruation … is severely affected in countries which are vulnerable to climate change and Pakistan is one them,” she explains. “The menstruation in girl children living in extreme heat, such as in Turbat and Karachi, becomes very intense, painful and with cramps.”

Dr Sammi further elaborates that this phenomenon is linked to the increased release of cortisol and estrogen, the hormones which regulate the female reproductive cycle. “Girl children exposed to harsher environments such as severe heat or cold, experience hormonal imbalances leading to irregular periods and severe menstrual cramps. The hospitals in Turbat are frequented by patients suffering from intense cramps or irregular periods.”

Hygiene becomes another pressing issue during floods, especially for young girls. Research published by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health states that floodwater contains lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other chemicals which are cited as causes of irregular periods.

Overcoming the stigma around periods is a daunting task, particularly in small towns in Balochistan where cultural norms and practices have a strong hold on communities. During floods, thousands of girls struggle with menstruation amid the disasters and lack of menstruation products. For instance, after the 2022 floods, 650,000 pregnant women and girls in Pakistan were without essential maternal care, with a significant proportion from Balochistan.

Amid all this chaos, climate activists like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch helped raise awareness while women like Maryam Jamali work directly on the ground to ensure that every women has rations in her household and had access to feminine hygiene products during catastrophes.

Madat Balochistan–a non-profit organisation–has supported 31,000+ people across 34 districts in Sindh and Balochistan. With its major work concentrated in and around Quetta, Dera Bugti, Jaffarabad, Jhal Magsi, Sohbatpur, and Khuzdar, the proudly women-led NGO prioritizes women and girls in its work because even on the frontlines, they are bearing most of the cost of climate change, according to its co-founder, Maryam Jamali.

“Our conversations on climate change vulnerability often treat everyone as ‘equal’ in terms of impact, when that is far from the truth. Vulnerability is a multi-dimensional concept and in a country like Pakistan where most of the women and girls are pushed to the margins of society in every way possible–we cannot just overlook their struggles,” says Jamali.

Take the 2022 floods, for example–the most recent catastrophes etched in our memories. Women and girls were responsible for most of the labour when it came to evacuating to safer places. As soon as they did, their needs when it came to menstruation or pregnancy care were completely ignored by aid agencies as they sent out packages or set up medical camps. Most of our work at Madat was compensating for things like this. We worked with midwives to ensure that women who could not stand in lines for ration received it regardless or women who did not want to interact with male doctors didn’t have to. In our housing projects, we prioritize women especially those who don’t have a patriarch in the household because that severely limits their access to resources for rehabilitation.

Floods, heatwaves, and other natural calamities are gender-neutral. However, girls are more likely to be negatively affected. According to the UN Assistant Secretary-General Asako Okai, when disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men. In Pakistan, 80% of people displaced by climate disasters are women and children, and the province of Balochistan is a stark reflection of this statistic.

In patriarchal societies, women and girls are the primary caregivers of the family, and they are the only ones growing crops, doing household chores, and fetching firewood and water. With little or no potable water nearby, girls have to travel far to help their parents, making them vulnerable.

These household responsibilities create an educational gap, and girls are taken out of schools in Balochistan during floods. With Pakistan’s lowest girl literacy rate at just 27 per cent , the International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported that the province of Sindh and Balochistan have seen greater educational disruptions due to heatwaves and floods, with the 2022 flood causing more educational institutions closure than the combined two year COVID-19 pandemic.

With 47 percent of it’s child population out of school, extreme heatwaves and recurrent flooding in Balochistan have further compounded this absenteeism. For instance, the 2022 flood damaged or destroyed 7,439 schools in the province, affecting the education of over 386,600 students, 17,660 teachers, and staff members. Reports also mention that most of the government schools were used as flood shelters in the province. In the 2024 floods, 464 schools were again damaged.

The destruction of educational infrastructure has forced many children out of school, contributing to the province’s high out-of-school rate.

Monsoon Brides during floods

Though floodwater is no longer accumulating in the Mulla Band Ward of Gwadar district in Balochistan, the damage it has wrought will stay with the people for a long time for many years. For 16-year-old Gul Naz–a pseudonym–the loss has been devastating.

She was only 16 years when flood water entered their home in 2022. Her father, being a fisherman, struggled to make ends meet, as the sea was completely closed for fishing, cutting off the family’s only source of income.

“I was in the Jannat Market and when I returned home, I was told by my mother that my marriage has been fixed to a man twice my age in exchange for money.” She discloses that her parents were given Rs.50,000 ($178.50) which is a whooping sum for a poor family who survive on around one dollar a day.

“I have two kids now, and I am a child raising a child.”

The sadness in Gul Naz’s voice is palpable, and she isn’t alone in her predicament. During floods and emergency situations, families in Balochistan resort to desperate means for survival. The first and most obvious way is to give their daughters away in marriage for financial relief–a practice that usually surges during monsoon season, earning the name monsoon brides.

In Pakistan’s Sindh province this trend is more prevalent, with a spike in the number of monsoon brides during the last flash floods of 2022. In the Khan Mohammad Mallah Village, Dadu district, approximately 45 were married off in that year, according to an NGO Sujag Sansar which works to reduce child marriages in the region.

Pakistan stands sixth in the world in marriages below age 18. While there has been a reduction in child marriages in Pakistan in recent years, UNICEF warns that extreme weather patterns put the girl children at risk.

Madat Balochistan has also been in the forefront in reducing child marriages in Balochistan. “It’s not intuitive to think of girls’ education or loan relief or housing provision as measures to build climate change resilience, but in our contexts these are the very things that drive vulnerability to climate change,” says Maryam Jamali. “We have been working on supporting farmers with loan relief so that young girls aren’t married off to compensate for the financial burden of loans after a lost harvest. We are also working on initiatives for sustainable livelihoods for women as well as ensuring that young girls in all the communities we work in have access to education despite geographic or financial limitations.”

Maryam Jamali thinks that gender inequality is one of the biggest aspects here which makes it absolutely necessary for a region like Balochistan, where physical vulnerability and socio-economic vulnerability is high, to have young girls at the decision-making table.

“Activists like Zunaira can ensure that when we come up with solutions for climate change, we contextualize them through a gender lens and make sure that this does not become another instance of taking away women’s agency, but becomes an opportunity to involve them in climate change policy decision-making,” Maryam discloses. “ It is rewarding to see the girls we support do great things. One of our girls from Musakhel is studying at Cadet College Quetta, the first in her family to be able to pursue education beyond 8th grade.”

The Way forward

“Extreme weather can fuel conflict and be a threat multiplier,” says Advocate Siraj Gul, a lawyer at the Balochistan High Court, Quetta, citing the recent research published in the journal Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.

Hailing from the Makran division , he stresses that the decades long running insurgency in Balochistan stems from human rights violations, inequality and government negligence. “Climate related catastrophes further destabilise the region’s development. For instance, there was a surge in the number of protests during the 2022 floods in Gwadar, Lasbela and Turbat, reflecting the deep frustration and despair of the people.”

According to Mr. Gul, if children like Zunaira are given a platform to speak and work for Balochistan, they are not merely advocating for the environment; they are working for a more peaceful and tranquil region.

In the impoverished regions of the world where climate change fuels droughts, flood and heatwaves, children are the ones to bear. Some are taken out of school, pushed into labor or given away in marriage but if empowered, can become advocates for change like Zunaira Qayyum Baloch. The world needs to provide climate resilient infrastructure and child-oriented disaster relief programs while the global leaders at COP30 had better ensure that climate-torn regions like Balochistan receive the technical and financial support they desperately need.

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Zeeshan Nasir is a Turbat-based writer and currently pursuing his MBBS Degree from the Makran Medical college, Turbat. He tweets on X @zeeshannasir972. He has contributed to Daily Dawn, The Diplomat and other publications. Read other articles by Zeeshan.

Washed away

Van Nguyen 

Published March 8, 2025 

DAWN

The writer is the deputy resident representative of UNDP Pakistan.


A TROUBLING trend is emerging in Pakistan: young girls in flood-prone areas are increasingly being married off before the seasonal rains arrive. These ‘monsoon brides’ are not just victims of tradition but of poverty and the worsening effects of climate change. Pakistan has the sixth highest number of child marriages globally. The climate crisis is only exacerbating this issue. As floods devastate homes and livelihoods, families — facing economic desperation — turn to early marriage as a survival strategy. Instead of offering security, it locks girls into a vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and poor health, robbing them of their futures.

A recent UNDP study on climate, politico-economic stressors, and their impact on gender equity in Pakistan found that in flood-affected areas, girls are 25 per cent more likely to drop out of school and enter early marriage. Climate-induced displacement and loss of income push families towards desperate coping mechanisms, with child marriage being one of the most harmful.

This pattern was starkly evident after the 2022 monsoon floods. In Sindh, reports of early marriages surged as families, left with no other means of survival, sought refuge in outdated customs that they believed would provide stability. Instead, these marriages led to higher rates of domestic violence, maternal health risks, and lost educational opportunities — deepening the very poverty families sought to escape.

Economic cost of child marriage: Beyond the social consequences, child marriage costs Pakistan an estimated $0.8 billion annually. Early marriage reduces women’s earning potential, increases dependency, and strains public services — especially the healthcare system — due to higher maternal and infant mortality rates. The UNDP Human Development Report underscores that women and girls bear the brunt of climate disasters, as existing gender inequalities limit their access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. When floods wash away agricultural land and homes, families are often left with no alternative livelihoods, making them more likely to marry off their daughters.


Climate change is forcing girls into early marriage.

Legal gaps — why laws are not enough: Despite existing laws against child marriage, enforcement remains inconsistent across provinces. The legal marriage age must be raised to 18 nationwide, with strict implementation and penalties for violations. Strengthening birth and marriage registration systems and closing legal loopholes are critical steps to protecting girls. However, laws alone are not enough. To effectively combat child marriage, we must address its root causes — climate vulnerability, poverty, and weak governance — through coordinated policies and economic reforms.

UNDP’s response: building resilience and empowering girls: At UNDP, we are actively working to tackle these challenges. Our Climate and Gender Vulnerability Index shows that districts most affected by climate shocks — including rural Sindh, Balochistan, and south Punjab — also have higher rates of child marriage. To counter this, UNDP is restoring livelihoods through cash-for-work programmes, vocational training, and enterprise development, particularly for women and youth. These efforts help alleviate financial desperation, a key driver of early marriage. Education access is being prioritised, with schools rehabilitated in KP and Balochistan, and plans are underway to restore 60 more in Sindh’s flood-affected areas.

Our disaster risk management programmes are expanding early warning networks to ensure at-risk communities receive timely information about impending climate disasters. Stren­gthening climate resilience through im­­p­ro­­ved flood forecasting, evacuation plans, and community awareness programmes can help reduce the economic devastation that fuels child marriage. Women’s participation in disaster response remains below 10pc. Increasing their representation in disaster management bodies is essential for designing crisis responses that protect girls from climate-induced vulnerabilities like child marriage.

Future of Pakistan’s daughters: The monsoon rains will continue to come. But whether they wash away the futures of young girl or whether we step in to protect them depends on the actions taken today. On this International Women’s Day, as we rally behind the theme ‘Accelerate Action’, we must recognise that addressing child marriage is not just a moral imperative but a critical step towards sustainable development. Protecting Pakistan’s daughters requires urgent investment in education, economic opportunities, legal protections, and climate resilience.

By acting now, we can break the cycle of child marriage and ensure that our daughters have the chance to build their own future — no matter the weather.

The writer is the deputy resident representative of UNDP Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2025

PATRIARCHY IS FEMICIDE & CHATTEL SLAVERY

‘They marry girls off because they are a burden’: The battle to save Bangladesh’s child brides

Tom Parry
Sun 19 January 2025

In Bhola, 56 per cent of girls were forced into marriage before completing secondary school - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph


Kneeling on the carpet in a schoolroom made of battered metal sheets, the beaming pupils sing with infectious gusto.

Though all are from families struggling to survive in one of Bangladesh’s most vulnerable locations, the children are dressed impeccably, and their behaviour is equally irreproachable.

As I watch these earnest students recite their teacher’s blackboard instructions by rote, they look like the embodiment of adorable innocence.

Outside the gaudily painted classroom, however, the harsh reality is that some of these 10-year-olds will be married off before they reach 16.

Here on the silt island of Bhola, the majority of the 19 girls in the class are at the mercy of a tradition which means they will be given away by their families well before adulthood.

Many of the schoolgirls will be given away by their families well before adulthood - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

A recent study conducted by the Bangladesh-based NGO BRAC – which provides primary education for many of the nation’s children, including in Bhola – found that over 60 per cent of families there are practising child marriage.

According to its survey of 50,000 households conducted across the country last year, 56 per cent of girls were forced into marriage before completing secondary school.

In the worst-affected district of Pirojpur, close to Bhola, 72.6 per cent of girls were married off by their families before the legal minimum age of 18.

This systemic problem in Bangladeshi society is one of the main reasons why BRAC invests so much in education.

The charity, which is the largest organisation of its kind globally with 90,000 employees, believes that by preventing children from dropping out of school in places like Bhola, it can reduce the prevalence of child marriage.

Bangladesh-based NGO BRAC provides primary education for many of the nation’s children - SImon Townsley/The Telegraph

BRAC spokesperson Nafisa Islam explains that even though the girls are most vulnerable to being married off at secondary school age, there is equal focus on keeping boys in education.

Traditionally, many boys leave before they reach their early teens so they can support their families through work, often fishing or farming. This means that as the boys near 18 their families seek out a younger bride, in keeping with tradition.

“By solving the drop-out rate, we should arrest the prevalent problem of child marriage in Bangladesh,” Nafisa states, sitting next to me at the edge of the classroom.

“Until now, the drop-out rate has been high because they can see that education will not add much value to their lives.”

In Bhola, around 14 per cent of pupils drop out before the age of 11, often because extreme cyclones mean families are compelled to send children to work to cover the cost of rebuilding their homes.

In Bhola, around 14 per cent of pupils drop out of education before the age of 11 - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Bhola, one of the nation’s river islands – known as chars – is only six feet above sea level at its highest point. Its towns have witnessed an influx of people forced to leave places which are now impossible to cultivate.

For many girls, there is no chance of even starting education. According to BRAC, 1.5 million primary-aged girls are not enrolled in school in Bangladesh.

The families of the primary school girls receive a small stipend as a way of encouraging them to keep their children at school. This donation enables families to withstand additional costs incurred by ongoing learning.

At the school, the cohort of 25 children all live within a ten-minute walk of the small classroom, in keeping with BRAC’s policy of keeping schools are as accessible as possible.

At its peak, in 2009, the BRAC network had 64,000 schools and 1.8 million students.

Nine-year-old student Hasna Bibi Ussa wants to become a teacher - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

What is striking about all of the children I talk with is their ambition.

Hasna confidently proclaims her desire to become a teacher, while her friend Samiya is insistent that she will one day leave Bhola to train as a doctor.
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Habib declares that unlike his father, who grows rice on a small plot, he will become an officer in the Bangladeshi Army.

Whether reality conforms to their expectations will only become clear in the coming years.

Their teacher Bibi Kulsum, 38, is more grounded in the aspirations she holds for her students. Nonetheless, she has observed considerable progress over the two years she has headed up the programme.

Teacher Bibi Kulsum says she has observed considerable progress in the two years at the programme’s helm - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

“When I started the drop-out rate was really high here,” she says. “It has got better, but most of the girls still get married off too early. During Covid, child marriage was even more prevalent.

“Sometimes we are able to protest to their families, or even report it to the police, and some then come back. Others just disappear, and we never see them at school again.

“Most of this is caused by poverty. They want to get their girls married off because they feel like they are a burden.

“I feel like I have an important role to play here and want to continue to offer these children something different.”

Parents gathered outside the school for our visit are gushing in their praise.

Parents gather outside the school, including Nurjahan Begum, in orange - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Although perhaps intimidated by the presence of authority figures in the audience, they insist their children will not be married off early.

“I want my daughter to be educated and then to get a job before she is married,” proclaims one mum, Nurjahan Begum, 35, whose husband is a farmer. “I wish I had had a chance to get a job when I was young. I want my daughter to be able to achieve what I could not in her life.”

Nurjahan’s positive views justify the policies of Safiqul Islam, director of BRAC’s education program for 34 years.

When he started out in the 1980s, 40 per cent of Bangladesh’s primary-age children were not in school.

As a result, the charity has spent decades renting one-room schools in every village to eliminate travel problems.

Students’ neatly placed shoes outside the BRAC School - Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

School hours are adjusted to fit families’ needs, especially during harvest periods, and local women are trained to be teachers, rather than bringing in people from outside.

Another solution has been to provide floating boat schools which drop anchor in remote communities impossible to access by road and often flooded.

As Bangladesh endured the longest school lockdown in the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, BRAC introduced an accelerated learning programme to bring pupils back up to speed, backed by Danish philanthropic body the Hempel Foundation and UK government funding.

For Hasna and Samiya, the schoolroom’s frail walls, although defenceless against cyclones, are a refuge. What happens when they leave is less certain.

How Pakistan’s climate crisis is fueling violence against women

The 2022 floods in Pakistan amplified pre-existing gender inequalities, leaving women — who are least responsible for the global climate crisis — with a disproportionate burden of survival.

Sarah B. Haider

Published December 23, 2024 

PRISM/DAWN

Zainab saw her world turn upside down in 2022, when catastrophic floods wreaked havoc across Pakistan. She was among the hundreds and thousands of people who lost their homes, land, and even loved ones due to the deluge.

Two years on, the water may have receded, but the havoc they wreaked continues to haunt the 50-year-old and her family.

The floods forced Zainab and her family, hailing from Dadu district’s Ahmed Khan Babar village in Sindh, out of their mud house and into a makeshift thatched shelter in the same village, where they continue to live to this day.

To top it all off, her co-wife Zarina died during childbirth shortly after the displacement, leaving Zainab to care for the newborn girl, two of Zarina’s other children, and her ailing husband, who is no longer able to work.

“As poverty and isolation took their toll, my husband became physically and verbally abusive towards me, and our financial condition forced us to give away the newborn baby to a childless couple,” she told Dawn.com via a video call from her village, with the assistance of a local schoolteacher.

Today, Zainab survives on handouts from villagers, constantly battling against the impact of climate change, domestic violence, and the guilt of losing Zarina’s newborn daughter.

The 2022 floods, the most horrific in the country’s history, killed 1,700 people, displaced over 33 million, swept away swathes of agricultural land, and incurred losses worth $30 billion, according to the government’s estimates.

While the Sindh government has started the reconstruction of 2.1 million houses to rehabilitate more than 12.6m flood-affected people, for women like Zainab, the impact of climate change goes beyond the loss of homes and financial constraints.

The floods amplified pre-existing gender inequalities, leaving Zainab and hundreds of thousands of women with a disproportionate burden of survival and a heightened risk of gender-based violence (GBV), further exacerbated by displacement and resource scarcity.
Climate change and gender-based violence

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described GBV as “harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender, rooted in gender inequality, the abuse of power and harmful norms”.

Examples of gender-based violence include domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual assault, early and forced marriages, economic violence, human trafficking, and femicide, among others.

Displacement, global food insecurity and socio-economic instability — all compelled by climate change — exacerbate these acts of violence against women, particularly in conflict and poverty-stricken contexts, making them the most pressing issues of our time.

Women comprise 80 per cent of those displaced by climate change and are 14 times more likely to die in a climate disaster as compared to their male counterparts, according to data by the UN.

A 2023 study covering India, Pakistan, and Nepal, tracked nearly 195,000 girls and women aged 15-49 and found that a 1°C rise in average annual temperature correlated with more than a 6pc increase in incidents of physical and sexual violence.

Similarly, a 2021 study from Kenya found that women were 60pc more likely to report intimate partner violence in regions hit by extreme weather events. Likewise, a 2018 study from Spain showed a 40pc increase in the risk of intimate partner femicide following heatwaves, together with a surge in police reports and helpline calls.

Explaining the relationship between the impact of climate change and increased vulnerabilities witnessed by marginalised communities, Sohail Maqbool Malik, technical team leader at the Climate Resourcing Coordination Centre (CRCC), said, “Climate change is not limited to economic impacts but also intersects with national security, displacement, and conflict, acting as a threat multiplier. Regions experiencing local conflicts and effects of climate change combined — such as Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia — are prime examples of this intersection.”

He referenced Article 7.1 of the Paris Agreement, which focuses on three critical aspects: building adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerabilities to climate change.

“When we use the term vulnerability, it is important to understand that it exists at macro levels (countries and regions) to meso levels (sectors like agriculture and food security), down to the individual level, where women and children are disproportionately affected,” he told Dawn.com.

“Events like floods or droughts exacerbate vulnerabilities, especially among those with fewer resources.”

Struggles of displacement

Kaveeta Kolhi, 45, a peasant woman from the Masood Abad village near Bodar Farm in Taluka Umerkot of Sindh, recalled the devastation of the 2022 floods, which destroyed her home and crops and killed her family’s livestock.

Speaking to Dawn.com from her village, she explained how the displacement left her family, including her young daughters, vulnerable to sexual harassment.

“Men used to stare at our girls and would inappropriately touch them at times when we sought shelter,” she said, adding that many families faced similar ordeals but chose not to speak about it due to the stigma of “dishonour”.

Experts point out how systemic vulnerabilities worsen gender-based violence during climate crises. “When climate disasters occur, the priority is to move the victims to safer locations, so naturally, the idea of gender segregation is not a priority,” said Malik. “Since displacement camps lack secure spaces for women and girls, it heightens their exposure to sexual exploitation — a reality documented globally in every camp and post-disaster situation.”

For widows like Jaiti, from Walidad Palli village, the struggles extend beyond physical safety. Left without support after the floods, she has had to balance finding work while protecting her daughters.

“Two of my elder daughters stay at home to care for the younger ones while I try to earn money,” she said. “But landlords no longer hire me due to their own losses from the floods. I’m too scared to leave my daughters alone, and I have no one else to rely on.”

According to Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, such individual accounts reflect a broader global pattern.

“When disasters strike and threaten livelihoods, communities may resort to negative coping mechanisms, such as trafficking, sexual exploitation, and harmful practices like early and child marriage or school dropouts — all of which force women and girls to choose between risk-imbued options for survival,” she said.
‘Climate brides’

The consequences of climate change, poverty, and displacement often force families to make desperate decisions, resulting in increased incidents of GBV, such as marrying girls off at an early age.

Panchoo Khetu, 52, from Khan Sahib Rasti village in Umerkot, Sindh, watched her mud house swept away by the floods. A mother to several teenage daughters, she recounted how it became difficult to feed so many mouths under the circumstances.

“Like many other families, we had to have our daughters engaged or married off after the displacement to reduce the family’s expenses,” she told Dawn.com.

According to Girls Not Brides, a non-profit organisation, child marriage is a recognised form of GBV and a violation of human rights. It exposes girls to severe risks, including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, often leading to unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and mental health issues. Data shows that girls married before the age of 15 are nearly 50pc more likely to experience intimate partner violence.

Early marriages are already common in Pakistan, with figures from Unicef showing that the country has nearly 19 million child brides, with one in six young women married in childhood.

Neha Mankani, a health practitioner and founder of the Mama Baby Fund, has extensively worked with vulnerable communities in post-disaster situations. Extreme weather and climate disasters aggravate such practices, she noted.

“[In the context of displacements] early age marriage is a really big thing — we call these girls ‘climate brides’,” she told Dawn.com. “When families don’t have anything and they have lost resources, there is an increase in child and forced marriages, because there is a price that the families get for selling their daughters. And it also means that they have to spend less money on one person in the household.”

Malik concurred, adding that families in flood-hit regions have been forced into desperate measures, such as giving daughters in marriage in exchange for cows and goats.

“Gender-based violence is a pervasive outcome of both climate change and conflict, driven by resource scarcity.”

A lost future

The floods that devastated Pakistan in 2022 not only displaced families but also crushed the educational dreams of many young girls, who were forced out of schools and could never resume their studies.

Twelve-year-old Geeni from the Masood Abad village lamented the loss of her future due to the unfortunate displacement.

“Before the floods, I used to go to school, but once we left our home, I could not return,” she said. Though unfortunate, her story was not unique, as many other children had to face a similar fate in the aftermath of natural disasters.

According to the Unicef, over 2m children in Pakistan were unable to access education after the country’s worst flooding in history damaged or destroyed nearly 27,000 schools, exposing more than 600,000 adolescent girls to higher risks of school dropout, gender-based violence, and child marriage.

Image showing a house destroyed by the floods of 2022 in Masood Abad village near Bodar Farm in Taluka Umerkot of Sindh. — Allah Bux Arisar

Dr Sadia Khalid, founder of Climate Education Warriors, an NGO working on climate action awareness, shared her experience of working with young girls from Chitral and Kailash Valley in northern Pakistan.

“During my conversation with the girls, I noticed they had limited knowledge about their geographical landscape and the impact of climate change on their lives,” Dr Khalid said, adding that what struck her the most was the vulnerability of girls in these regions to environmental issues, particularly in the context of migration, water, and food scarcity.

She described how the harsh climate, lack of infrastructure, and patriarchal society were increasing the severity of issues, as many girls are forced to drop out of school due to poverty, lack of schools, or early marriage.

“On my way to Garam Chashma, I met a 16-year-old girl named Gulnaz, who shared how floods destroyed her family’s crops, forcing her to leave school. She once dreamed of becoming a doctor, but now her future feels uncertain,” Dr Khalid shared.

“Despite these hardships, I can still see the determination in their eyes — their unwavering desire to overcome all barriers and build better futures for themselves.”
Climate change, mental health, and violence

The psychological impact of displacement is often overlooked, yet it is one of the most pervasive consequences of climate-induced disasters, as seen in the case of Panchoo, who said, “The stress of survival has led to daily arguments and even violence within families.”

These emotional and mental health problems were likely to get worse, especially when there was no access to therapy or support. As highlighted by the World Economic Forum, climate change, particularly extreme temperatures and natural disasters can significantly affect mental health.

Meanwhile, a study showed that between 20pc to 50pc of people who experience extreme weather events can develop immediate symptoms like anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), sleep disruption, and suicidal thoughts. Around 10pc to 20pc may experience PTSD in the years following the disaster.

Experts pointed out that anxiety, depression, and stress due to the loss of income and displacement not only affect the mental health of women and girls but also affect the mental health of men which, in turn, leads to an increase in GBV.

“At a secondary level, you see the mental health of women being affected by climate-induced migrations,” Farahnaz Zahidi, environmental journalist and Pakistan editor of Third Pole, told Dawn.com

“For example, in areas of Sindh with extreme heat, men have to move to [to other places] because their crops are being affected by climate-induced events and there is not enough harvest. So when the women are alone, in a deeply rural environment, they get depressed.”

The journalist recounted a story she reported in which women in Tharparkar were driven to take their own lives due to depression and loneliness caused by the ongoing drought.

Speaking about the broader reasons for GBV, Zahidi said that while not a justification, intimate partner violence committed by men is also a result of the climate crisis.

“It is true that if the crop is less and there’s not enough money and the cattle are dying or they are displaced, that impacts the mental health of men as well, which means they have more bouts of anger. They have anger issues, and, then that is taken out on the wife, unfortunately,” she said.

Mankani also highlighted the same issue, saying that displacement caused both men and women to suffer from various mental health problems, which ultimately led to an increase in intimate partner violence.

Speaking about her experience of working with families of the climate-affected coastal community of Baba Island, she said witnessed an increase in cases of GBV.

“When families are displaced, there is a lot of frustration because of the loss of resources but climate change also generally leads to an increase in GBV incidents,” she said, adding that she runs clinics in Baba Island, which is a community entirely comprising fisherfolk and they’re completely dependent on fish for survival.

The impact of climate change has significantly disrupted the fishing industry, with warmer waters, overfishing, environmental degradation, and rising sea levels leading to a severe reduction in fish stocks, she added.

“As a result, many people in affected communities, particularly those dependent on fishing for income, are facing financial hardship. This change has led to more men remaining in the community rather than going out to sea, which has contributed to an increase in intimate partner violence. Moreover, the economic strain and stress have led to a rise in addiction issues, which are also linked to a surge in gender-based violence.”
Pathways to resilience, social protection for women

Even though there are immense challenges faced by women and girls displaced by climate-induced events, efforts are underway to build resilience, especially through governmental and private gender-sensitive interventions, healthcare programmes, cash assistance, shelter, food security, and education for women and their families.

International organisations like the UN, the World Bank, and various NGOs have recognised the urgency of addressing both climate change and GBV in disaster-stricken areas. However, the response often falls short due to a lack of coordination, funding, and long-term sustainable solutions.

Despite these efforts, however, the story of Zainab remains a grim reminder of the long road ahead. Like many other women and girls displaced by climate-induced events, she faces a future shaped by uncertainty and vulnerability.

Image showing a makeshift house occupied by people displaced by the 2022 floods in the Masood Abad village of Umerkot, Sindh. — Allah Bux Arisar


Independent climate expert Fatima Yamin says there is a need for broader societal efforts to address the intersectionality of climate change and GBV.

“The cause [of GBV] is not climate change itself, but the inability and failure of society, state, and the government to reduce the vulnerability of these groups by offering them social protections, welfare, and economic relief,” she said.

“The private and public sectors need to target men and women both for training in gender sensitivity and inequality.”

The expert added that social protections such as entitlements in the education and health sectors need to be catered to women, with consultations for men on reproductive health, the impact of early marriages on young girls, and sensitivity to gender-equitable needs.

“Protections for elderly women and women with disabilities must also be provided. These policies, when implemented, can somewhat reduce the pressures of climate change on women and girls.”

Additional reporting by Allah Bux Arisar from Umerkot.

How the World Hides Liability for Climate Deaths

Ashley Berke | 23 Dec 2024

Unfair family planning regimes have stalled progress in the climate fight and prevent children from having a fair start in life.

Nearly half the world’s children “live in countries where risks to their health and safety due to the effects of climate change are extremely high,” according to UNICEF. By 2050, almost all children globally will be “exposed to heat waves,” resulting in the rise of specific health issues, especially for smaller children, adds the agency.

Rich nations’ inability or unwillingness to curb their emissions has exacerbated the climate crisis, which, if left unchecked, may unfold apocalyptic scenarios. Those most responsible for the climate crisis spent decades funding denialism while robbing children and animals of the future they deserve. They exploited the world’s people and resources while hoarding wealth for themselves.

The outcome of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a shining example of how rich countries are reluctant to take remedial steps to secure the children’s and the planet’s future. The COP29 was widely criticised for the rich world’s failure to adequately address developing nations’ critical climate-related financing needs.

“The latest NCQG [New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance] decision at COP29 starkly highlights the unwillingness of developed and oil-rich nations to take responsibility for their historical and substantial emissions,” said Pegah Moulana, the secretary general of Youth and Environment Europe, the largest independent platform of environmental youth organizations in Europe. “By failing to provide concrete support to the most affected states and neglecting to establish a robust protocol to ensure these nations remain debt-free during implementation, the decision exacerbates climate injustice.”

According to a 2024 analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development, the poorest countries and those most vulnerable to climate change spend “more than twice as much to service their debts as they receive to fight the climate crisis.”

Sri Lanka Struggling to Fight Climate Change

A 2020 World Bank report points out how climate change is a threat to poverty reduction and is expected to drive between 68 million and 135 million people into poverty by 2030. “Climate change is a particularly grave threat for countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—the regions where most of the global poor are concentrated,” the report states.

Island nations like Sri Lanka are especially more susceptible to the effects of climate change. In June 2024, Hafsa Jamel from the Lanka Environment Fund told Climate Champions, “With 33 percent of our population living along vulnerable coastlines and facing risks from rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and frequent natural disasters, the challenges are immense. … and a distressing 81.2 of our population lacks the capacity to adapt to these changes.”

The Global Climate Risk Index has placed Sri Lanka among the top ten countries likely to experience extreme weather events. Climate change has already severely affected the country’s poorest and most vulnerable regions.

According to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), an independent, global database of anthropogenic emissions, Sri Lanka’s 2023 greenhouse gas emissions represent a mere 0.07 percent of the global total.

Amita Arudpragasam, a policy analyst from Colombo, Sri Lanka, wrote for the Pulitzer Center in September 2024 that “[B]y some projections, by the end of the century, [Sri Lanka] will experience mean temperatures approaching 35 degrees Celsius (considered the upper limit of human survivability or the wet-bulb temperature).”
Reshaping Climate Policy: Birth Equity

We can reshape climate policy by shifting the focus to children’s rights and ensuring birth equity as a fundamental aspect of policy evaluation. These rights include a healthy environment and a fair start in life and should not just guarantee mere survival; they need to ensure circumstances where each child has the right to thrive. Each child should be entitled to the same social, cultural, political, and economic conditions and be treated as an equal member of society with a voice and meaningful influence in shaping their future.

A child born in New York City has basic access to welfare resources, health care, and a safe environment. But a child born in rural Uganda does not. In these circumstances, where survival is uncertain, thriving is a distant dream. No child can discover their innate talent or pursue their life goals if they are battling polio or malaria. The lives of these children are filled with struggles and suffering or are cut short tragically.

Every person must ask: Why do we tolerate this initial inequity?

“Above all, we’re talking about how all these—and many other events and policies and cultural practices—have worked together to keep wealth and well-being disproportionately concentrated in white communities,” writes Edgar Villanueva in Decolonizing Wealth (2021), which focuses on how philanthropy nonprofits need to engage in reparative justice.

“The fact that… communities of color and low-income communities face more pollution is not a coincidence or an accident. It is the direct, if at times unintended, consequence of white supremacy and racist public policies,” states Climate Nexus.

The power relations that develop when we are created, between each other and with the nonhuman environment, are the basis of our positionality (i.e., our socioeconomic position relative to others) and impact all we do.

White supremacy might seem like an anomaly to many whites until they consider the massive financial and political inequity that continues to define the future of children at birth.

The climate crisis is embedded in the exploitation of natural resources by a few, leading to the exploitation of the majority population already facing inequity. To take remedial action, we need to address intergenerational justice.

An essential step in this direction would be to update the Convention on the Rights of the Child—necessitated by the climate crisis—which modifies existing reproductive rights regimes to focus on child share equity over reproductive autonomy or the inclusive and measurable empowerment of each child as they enter the world.

A Deadly Idea: Endless Growth

So, what does the right to a healthy environment mean? Access to unpolluted air and clean water is now a universal human right. To uphold this right, recommendations include holding companies accountable, urging governments to implement climate-protecting laws, promoting recycling, and more. Every small step, every action we take, matters.

However, the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution 48/13 overlooks one crucial aspect: the right to a fair start in life. This right should be considered the most fundamental human right. It should not be predetermined at birth based on circumstances a child is born into, such as being born in a small village in Kenya to a mother forced into a marriage merely for survival or to a wealthy New York family.

The threat to securing this right is more than political. Nonprofits and advocacy groups also play a role when they fail to include birth equity in their values and mission.

We urgently need to align with this principle of ensuring birth equity before we exhaust the finite resources on earth. Infinite growth is a fallacy and a dangerous belief that drives all economies. It cannot be remedied by continuing with neoliberal and technocratic solutions spearheaded by primarily white men invested in maintaining their wealth and power.

It is often touted that energy efficiency has increased since 1990, and carbon dioxide emissions have reduced. However, the facts ignore that the effects of population growth have reversed much of the progress made on the climate front.

The United States government, as well as governments around the world, are urging women to have more children with little or no safeguards and resources in response to falling fertility rates, especially in rich countries. Reduced fertility rates threaten the economic growth that created the climate crisis in the first place.

Hungary is another example of encouraging population growth without ensuring a fair start in life. It offers tax incentives to mothers of four or more children. The question remains: Who benefits from this growth? Not the children.
Bad Family Policies Cancel Out Progress

Animal rights and welfare involve protecting species and biodiversity and protecting and accounting for each nonhuman life. Humans must play their role in ensuring the liberation of animals and restoring balance in nature.

In the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas presents a groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite’s efforts to “change the world,” preserve the status quo, and obscure their role in creating the problems in the first place.

Many animal and environmental nonprofit organizations contribute to this issue and perpetuate the problems they claim to resolve. Instead of preserving the creation of relations between humans and nonhumans as an integral part of animal law and animal rights, they are causing damage by not emphasizing sustainable family planning and birth equity in their policies. This is pushing more animals into factory farming and worsening the climate crisis.

The demand for factory farming grows with every child entering the world, and industrial agriculture is responsible for 11 percent of global emissions, not to mention the unimaginable suffering of innocent animals.

The family policies many organizations support are harmful—undoing climate mitigation efforts that have led to the deaths of 4 million people between 2000 and 2024—and counter any good other policies might do. This dynamic can be labeled “impact fraud.”

Abstract academic debates about population ethics, often funded by concentrations of wealth and power reliant on inequity and growth, threaten to worsen the results of the climate crisis by forestalling the necessary law and policy reforms from being implemented. Many of the debates against these reforms emerge from the same Eurocentric vestige of colonialism—the historic entitlement of wealthy families exploiting birth positionality—nesting in the current human rights regime.

This threatens minimum thresholds of personal welfare, equal access to opportunities, participation in and adhering to political/legal systems purported to represent the governed, and the enjoyment of an environment relatively conducive to human and nonhuman health.

Academicians, foundations, and nonprofit organizations must rectify these issues by pushing for human rights systems that include child welfare and birth equity in instruments like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and ethics, law, and family planning policies.

Understanding misleading terms and supporting family policies that ensure minimum levels of well-being, equity, democracy, nature, and a sustainable right to have children for all through birth equity entitlements are important steps in that direction. These will ensure parental delay and readiness, equal opportunities for all children, and smaller or more sustainable families.

The False Promise of Growth

Emphasizing sustainable practices, such as switching to vegan brands and eating a plant-based diet, is essential for protecting the environment and ensuring animal welfare. Still, these practices cannot alone resolve the climate crisis.

In many cases, food tech startups that support the move to plant-based meat are often fueled, in part, by greenwashing.

The climate crisis is not just an imbalance of emissions and responsibility among nations. Some of the blame for climate inequity also falls on deceptive tactics like greenwashing, growthwashing, and humanewashing.

A more holistic approach is needed to prevent global warming and create a more just and equitable world for children and nonhuman animals. It is important to look beyond the fantasy world of value and progress built by nonprofits, media, foundations, companies, etc., all driven by growth-based funding. This funding hides the need for true reform, forestalls effective family law changes, and has led to the deadly climate crisis. That growth is setting us all toward a future of ecocide and extinction.

“You cannot have it both ways and complain that global warming will harm GDP,” writes Terry Cannon, emeritus senior research fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, in a May 2024 letter to the Guardian. “A drop in global GDP is one of the best things that can happen to reduce global warming if it reduces consumption of carbon-intensive products and services. GDP is a very poor way to measure the negative impacts of global warming.”

The Inequity of Opportunity Begins at Birth

The wealth gap between Black and white families has only worsened over time. “The growing disparity means that in 2022, for every $100 in wealth held by white households, Black households held only $15,” states a 2024 Brookings Institution article.

This gap is a result of colonization, slavery, and other structural forms of racism. This is the genesis of inequity of opportunity and should be the basis for treating the legal system that allows it as illegitimate.

“Policies that privilege whiteness are reflected in higher levels of wealth for the average white family, which can be leveraged across generations to generate greater wealth and advantages,” adds the Brookings article.

This disparity means that Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities absorb the most significant risks and harms in the climate crisis—both socially and ecologically. Black children were more than twice as likely to face hunger compared to white children in 2023.

These disparities can be resolved with universal birth equity-based planning—and significant baby bond distributions—but policymakers and wealthy white families that benefit from policies supporting this racial wealth gap prefer to exploit the difference.

Similarly, most rich countries have made their wealth by exploiting poorer nations and continue to profit by maintaining this inequality. This is true even though many developing countries have the answers to some of today’s global problems.

For instance, Sudan has the potential to “address the global food crisis” but can only achieve this with “the cooperation of its African and Middle Eastern neighbors, along with the international community, to move on from its war-torn history and play a vital part in global trade,” points out a 2024 World Economic Forum report.

While globally sustainable areas like the Congo Basin rainforest sustain a portion of the world’s oxygen supply, businesses and corporations use deceptive practices to hide the deforestation of these forests. This further contributes to more significant gaps in wealth for non-white communities.

Explosive Growth Has Destroyed Functional Democracy

The current situation is not ecologically sustainable, does not ensure the safety of unborn children, and has destroyed functional democracy. Democracy starts with “one person, one vote,” which implies that each vote is influential. Today, this is not the case.

We need to redistribute resources to ensure birth equity and a fair start in life instead of letting governments decide on these matters if we have to secure the future of our children.

This poverty and inequity cannot be challenged through democracy because family planning policies have ensured that the average citizen is disenfranchised, with little or no influence over the laws they are forced to live under.

Because growth is enabled by removing even minimum levels of welfare or equity, our elected officials simply do not represent their constituents. Growth has diluted votes.

The idea of representation is an illusion when, in reality, one must have access to significant wealth or other forms of influence to influence political outcomes. Also, the fact that the federal minimum wage is “poverty-level wages” is sufficient evidence that the law hardly reflects the people’s will.

Why Reparations to Young Disenfranchised Women Are Important

We can reverse the abovementioned injustices by backing young women’s right to self-determination and reparation.

“Society, as reflected in our government and the policy implemented by our democratically elected representatives, must do what’s best for children, regardless of economic impact, which must include social safety programs designed to give each child a fair start in life and climate reparations for the crisis we have caused and are leaving to them as our legacy,” argues Jessica Blome, a public interest attorney who frequently represents the Fair Start Movement, a nonprofit that promotes the convergence of social, eco, and reproductive justice (affiliated with two of this article’s authors, Carter Dillard and Beatrix Homler).

“That we are even debating the value of women’s autonomy as an economic driver—as opposed to an inalienable human right—is exactly why our culture needs to think differently about women and children,” Blome says.

Mwesigye Robert, a co-founder of Rejoice Africa Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes climate restoration and family policy, argues that political leaders often promote climate responses that are ultimately unrealistic because they are top-down solutions. “They have come up with well-meaning centralized climate responses in their speeches and proposals, but none of these are implemented effectively,” he says.

His organization advocates the care group model, which promotes social and behavioral changes through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Primarily deployed in international development contexts, care groups are often led by mothers sharing insights. “Effective climate restoration must be decentralized to the affected communities at the grassroots level,” says Robert.

All Children Deserve a Fair Start in Life

The climate and the related crises we face today were driven mainly, and certainly exacerbated, by the absence of child equity standards being included in reproductive rights dating back to 1948. This seeded racist inequity and unsustainable growth and created a fake version of social justice, one hiding the actual creation of power relations in birth, development, and inequity. It allowed wealthy white families to amass wealth—at a deadly cost to generations of BIPOC communities.

This is a fundamental entitlement or constitutive fraud: Obligating others to follow laws while not measurably empowering them to be in a position to influence those laws.

Wealthy families in nations most responsible for the climate crisis are now funding a fantasy world to continue this farce and evade climate reparations they owe for the harm they have caused. Environmental sustainability and social justice are vastly undone as children enter the world without the necessary resources.

If the world’s children are not given a fair start in life, it won’t be possible to form organizations capable of representative governance through the measurable self-determination of their constituents.

We must give each family equal opportunities and future generations the resources they need to fight climate change. This means giving each child the same rights, opportunities, and ability to shape the future.

Ashley Berke is co-executive director at Fair Start Movement.

This article was produced by Earth • Food • Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.