When Naushaba Roonjho became the first girl anyone in her district knew to have passed Pakistan’s national secondary school exam, the news was not celebrated. At home, in her village of Sheikh Soomar in southern Sindh, her father told her: “This is enough, you don’t need to study more. You should stay at home now.”
It was 2010 and Roonjho was 17; within weeks she was married, to Muhammad Uris, a labourer. Although, like all the girls in Thatta district, she had left school after primary, Roonjho had kept up her studies independently.
