What Pakistan’s New Family Law Changes Mean for Women’s Rights

TLDR: Pakistan passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2026 and raised the legal marriage age in Islamabad, two of the biggest shifts in family law in years. But a CEDAW review earlier this year showed the country still hasn’t touched the core issues of polygamy, divorce, and inheritance, and enforcement on the ground remains patchy at best.

A Year of Movement on Paper

Pakistan’s family law landscape has shifted more in the past twelve months than in most of the last decade. President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act 2026 into law in late January, and rights groups called it a long overdue step. The law criminalizes threatening a wife with a second marriage or with divorce as a way to control her, something that’s been an open secret in Pakistani households for generations but rarely treated as actionable abuse.

Islamabad also updated its Marriage Restraint Act, formally raising the legal marriage age to 18 and building in enforcement mechanisms that weren’t there before. That matters because child marriage has stayed common in parts of the country despite laws against it existing for years.

The Domestic Violence Act, Up Close

What makes the 2026 Act different from earlier attempts is its scope. It doesn’t just cover physical violence. It extends to psychological coercion, financial control, and threats tied to marital status, areas that past legislation mostly ignored. Human rights organizations have welcomed it, but they’re also blunt about one thing: a law only works if someone enforces it.

Punjab’s Parallel Push

While the federal and Islamabad reforms grabbed headlines, Punjab has been working on its own track. The province has an acid-control law aimed at one of the more horrifying forms of gendered violence, and lawmakers there have been pressing for stricter enforcement of the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act.

Where Enforcement Breaks Down

In October, a provincial assembly member visited a Women Protection Center in Rawalpindi and came away pushing for changes to cut procedural delays in domestic violence cases. That visit says a lot. The law exists. The protection centers exist. What’s missing, over and over, is speed and follow-through once a woman actually reports abuse. Delays in case disposal mean women often give up or go back to unsafe situations before a court ever rules.

Punjab has also floated mandatory pre-marital legal literacy, essentially making sure women know their rights under the law before they sign a marriage contract. It’s a small idea, but it points to a bigger problem: plenty of Pakistani women don’t know what protections they’re legally entitled to in the first place.

The Reforms That Haven’t Happened Yet

Here’s where the picture gets less encouraging. Earlier this year, the CEDAW Committee reviewed Pakistan’s record and came back with specific, pointed recommendations. Amend the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance to discourage polygamy and protect the economic rights of women already in polygamous marriages. Guarantee women equal maintenance and a fair share of matrimonial property after divorce. Fix the laws that still give women unequal standing on guardianship and inheritance.

None of that has moved yet. The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance dates back to 1961, and it remains, in practice, the backbone of how marriage and divorce work for most Pakistani Muslims. Reforming it touches religious, political, and cultural nerves that lawmakers have mostly avoided.

Minority Communities Are Waiting Too

It’s not only Muslim family law that needs updating. Christian couples in Pakistan are still governed by British colonial legislation, including a divorce act from 1869 that gives a husband only one legal ground for divorce: accusing his wife of adultery. Provincial officials have talked about amending these laws in consultation with church leadership, but talk and legislation are two different things.

The Gap Between the Law and the Living Room

Researchers who study this closely keep landing on the same finding. Marriage registrars across Pakistan often don’t follow the law as written, and many aren’t even trained on what the current rules say, especially around child marriage and a woman’s right to initiate her own divorce. Punjab has started mandatory training for registrars to close that gap, and early signs suggest it helps, but the rollout is slow and the province is large.

So where does that leave things? Pakistan passed real, meaningful legislation this year. The Domestic Violence Act and the Islamabad marriage age reform aren’t symbolic gestures, they’re enforceable law. But the harder reforms, the ones touching polygamy, divorce rights, and inheritance, are still sitting in CEDAW recommendations rather than parliamentary bills. For most Pakistani women, what happens in their own marriage will keep depending less on what’s written in Islamabad and more on whether the local registrar, police officer, or judge actually knows and applies the law in front of them.