The Senate on Monday passed the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Bill, 2018 which proposes that the legal minimum age of marriage in the country be set at 18.
She also pointed out that Muslim countries including Oman, Turkey and United Arab Emirates have already set 18 as the minimum age of entering marriage.
Rehman also apprised the upper house of the fatal threat that underage marriages pose to mothers.
"One woman dies in childbirth every 20 minutes," she said, adding that the reason for these deaths were early pregnancies.
Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) Senator Ghafoor Haideri opposed the bill, saying that complicated pregnancies were not tied to age but poor healthcare.
He argued that Islam allows marriage after puberty and recommended that the bill be sent to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) before being discussed in the Senate.
Rehman, meanwhile, pointed out that the bill had been endorsed unanimously by the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights. »