Marketing & Media trends
Industry trends
BizTrends Sponsors
Trending
Advertise your job ad
Jobs
- Marketing Manager Johannesburg
Pakistan: Dangerous traditions
Bound by 'watta satta', a cultural tradition of exchanged marriage between two families, Nuzhat (not her real name), 22, cannot disclose her HIV status.
For women like Nuzhat, revealing one's HIV status simply isn't possible. (Photo: Zofeen Ebrahim/IRIN)
"I know well what will happen - I'll be thrown out of my husband's home and my own family will never accept me either. It will also mean my brother's home will be ruined. His wife is my husband's sister and she, too, will be sent packing. In any case, where will I go?" she asked in Karachi, provincial capital of Sindh Province in southeastern Pakistan.
The tradition of watta satta, which literally means 'give and take', or 'throwing a stone and receiving something back', describes the exchange of brides between families, in which a brother and sister from one family are married to a pair from another family, often close relatives.
