Next weekmarks the fifth anniversary of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban as US coalition troops were evacuated from the country. In the most medieval of ways, the Taliban are also imposing even harsher laws to legitimise child marriage and provide legal exemption for domestic violence perpetrated by husbands, including against school-age girls. Yet an estimated 12 million girls under 18 are still married off each year when they could be at school. Pakistan’s Sindh province, by contrast, has enacted one of the strongest legal frameworks in the developing world against child marriage, criminalising marriage under 18 and introducing penalties for those who facilitate it. Child marriage is not simply a cultural practice, as often portrayed.