Vani (Urdu: ونی), or Swara (سوارہ), is a custom where girls, often minors, are given in marriage or servitude to an aggrieved family as compensation to end disputes, often murder.
[1][2] Vani is a form of arranged or forced child marriage,[3] and the result of punishment decided by a council of tribal elders named jirga.
[11] Hashmi and Koukab claim this custom started almost 400 years ago when two northwestern Pakistani Pashtun tribes fought a bloody war against each other.
[12] After the promulgation of the 1973 constitution, the Pakistani government, which made Sharia its prime legislative source, has forbidden and discouraged Vani as being un-Islamic and cruel.
[14][15][16] In 2008, a long-running blood feud in a remote corner of western Baluchistan province that started with a dead dog and led to 19 people, including five women, being killed and was resolved by handing over 15 girls, aged between three and 10, for marriage.
The jirga’s verdict included Vani, that is an order that the 13 girls must be handed over as wives to members of opposing group, for a crime committed by one man who could not be found for the trial.