Day: February 19, 2011

By Rabia Ali

Karachi: One of the possible aspects of the new Sindh cabinet is that there will be a negligible number of women, The News has learnt.

Sources told The News that the possible reshuffling of ministers was expected to reduce the number of women ministers in the new provincial cabinet as ministries were to be merged into one another and induction of new faces was to be expected.

At present, there are six women ministers amongst the 46 in the Sindh cabinet.

The ministers and their portfolios are Sassui Palejo, Minister for Culture and Tourism, Shazia Marri, Minister for Electric Power, Oil and Gas, Nargis N D Khan for Social Welfare, Nadia Gabol, Minister for Human Rights and Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto for Women Development.

Human Rights Minister, Nadia Gabol, belongs to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement while the rest represent the Pakistan People’s Party.

Amongst the ministries is the newly-formed electric power, oil and gas headed by Marri, which is expected to be merged with the department of coal and energy.

The new department was created with the devolution of the ministries after the 18th Amendment recognized the rights of natural resources between the other provinces and Sindh.

Meanwhile, fearing isolation from the party members and disciplinary action, women ministers told The News that they were content with whatever the party decided and would accept it whole-heartedly.

Sindh Minister for Women Development, Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto, said that the women ministers’ quota would be decided under the 18th Amendment.

“Whatever the law says, the decision would be taken under that, and I am sure that the decision would be a good one. Under the 18th Amendment, we want to bring an effective system into place, and for that whatever is decided, whether the number of women ministers is reduced, we would happily accept the decision.”

Bhutto said that she was not aware as yet of any decision taken in this regard, but whatever happened, they would not argue.

Minister for Social Development, Nargis N D Khan, said that due to the rightsizing under the 18th Amendment, the number of women and men legislators would be reduced.

But she refrained from commenting on how many women would be inducted in the new cabinet.

“I cannot say how many women will be there, but the quota would be under the 18th Amendment,” she said.

Meanwhile, sources said that the formation of the new cabinet had been delayed as the political scenario was overshadowed by other issues, such as the Raymond David case, and the former foreign minister distancing himself from the government stance.

Source: The News

Date:2/19/2011

Karachi: The courts should not rely heavily on medical evidence in a rape case, and the victim’s account should be considered enough.

This was stated by the director of War Against Rape, Sarah Zaman, at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Friday.

She was presenting an overview on the legal and procedural deterrents to justice in rape cases.

She said that the legal definition of sexual violence needed to be broadened to include incest, object rape, digital rape and marital rape.

The rapists must not be granted bail as they threatened the survivor and her family once they were bailed out, Zaman said.

She called for timely and expeditious trials, and said that the relevant departments should respond immediately to such cases.

The WAR director said that the curriculum must be used to stop gender stereotyping.

Meanwhile, WAR shared with the attendees of the press conference some of its data on rape cases. According to the data, a majority of the victims of sexual assaults in 2010 were children.

The police registered only 80 cases of sexual violence, it said.

Around 55 percent of the total cases of sexual assaults involved teenagers under 18 while 43 percent involved under 16s.

Around 34 percent cases comprised victims in the 18 to 23 age bracket.

A representative of WAR, Rukhsana Siddiqi, said that the NGO had collected the data on sexual abuse from the Civil Hospital, the JPMC and the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

She said that WAR investigated 96 cases in 2010, while the rest could not be taken to court for various reasons, one being the relocation of the victims.

Khalida Ahmed Quadr, the socio-legal officer of WAR, said that since the NGO’s inception some 22 years ago, it had been observed that the social taboos and problems associated with the crime which had been prevalent then existed even today.

She said that fewer rape cases were reported at the beginning of 2010, but by the end of the year, the figure rose.

She said that a lot of cases involving sexual assaults, especially incest, went unreported.

She praised the courage of the victims who were brave enough to fight the long and tiring battle to attain justice.

She said that only cases from impoverished localities were being reported while incidents taking place in affluent areas were hushed up, and even if the victim stepped forward for justice in such cases, the influential people involved in the heinous crime pressured the victim into taking the case back.

She cited the example of a JPMC nurse and the gang rape incident that took place in Defence recently, in which the victims were stopped from pursuing the case.

Shiraz Ahmed spoke of male victims of sexual abuse, saying that most of the cases went unreported as society was unable to accept that the crime of male rape existed.

He said that doctors and medico-legal officers needed to be sensitized on respecting the privacy of the victims.

Korangi Town tops the list

The sexual violence cases investigated by WAR highlighted the following facts:

*Highest number of incidents took place in Korangi Town (22%), followed by Gadap Town (15%), Gulshan-e-Iqbal (9%) and Bin Qasim Town (6%).

*32% cases were of gang rape.

*Majority (95%) of rape victims are female while the rest are male

*In 2010, there was an 8% increase in police reporting of sexual assault and a 7% increase in medico-legal examinations as compared to 2009.

*Five children were raped and murdered in 2010.

Source: The News

Date:2/19/2011