Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
SHEIKHUPURA: Two real sisters were abducted from Village Daoke in the limit of City Muridke Police here on Tuesday.
According to details, two real sisters of Liaqat Ali were returning home after purchasing some household items along with their sister-in-law. When they reaching near home, two accused identified as Waheed and Noor Hussain, riding a van allegedly abducted both the sisters. Liaqat informed the police City Muridke Police of the incident.
LAHORE: The Punjab government is all set to introduce two new women-specific bills in the coming session of the Punjab Assembly to promote gender equality and to protect women rights.
According to a press release on Tuesday, the first piece of legislation titled, “The Punjab Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Bill 2012” has been proposed by the Women Development Department which was established in April 2012 for promotion of gender equality and protection of women while safeguarding their rights.
The other bill is Punjab Land Revenue Rules 1968 whereby district committees for protection of right of inheritance of women shall be created. Women Development Department Secretary Irum Bukhari expressed the hope that both the bills poised to be tabled in the provincial legislature would bring about positive socio-economic outcomes. Believed to be associated with women empowerment.
LAST year, a bill was passed that outlaws, among other practices that exploit women, offering the latter in marriage to settle disputes. But the emergence of a new wani case in Balochistan proves that in Pakistan putting down laws on paper is only the starting point of a long, hard struggle for women’s rights. Such a struggle will have to involve making the judicial system accessible to citizens across the country if entrenched customs of tribal justice are to be rooted out.
As long as the official justice system remains slow, inconvenient and expensive, and as long as it is not woven into the fabric of Pakistani society, turning to councils of tribal elders will remain a tempting solution even if its results are inhumane and discriminatory by modern standards. The second piece of the problem is that mindsets remain regressive and misogynistic at the very top. The claim that a sitting member of the Balochistan Assembly may have been part of the jirga that allegedly advised that 13 girls of one tribe be offered to another tribe as compensation for a murder brings to mind another shocking instance of wrongly exercised influence, when in 2008 a senator from the province defended the alleged burying alive of five women for reasons of ‘honour’.
As long as those in positions of power within their tribes and constituencies continue to hold views like these, changing conditions for women will remain almost impossible.
If there is anything positive about the news, it is that a story such as this one may have gone unnoticed just a few years ago. And many stories still do. But there is some hope that the media attention the incident has received and the suo moto notice taken by the Supreme Court — if it leads to some accounta-bility — could work as deterrents in the future, especially in preventing influential people in the public eye from supporting actions against women. Until the slow, hard work of providing modern justice and holding those in power to account is done, making a noise about such instances is the only real weapon there is.
By: Zulfiqar Ali
PESHAWAR: The government has allocated huge amount of funds for gender development and juvenile protection in the Annual Development Programme for Fata without extending the relevant laws to tribal areas and setting up the required infrastructure there.
The Fata Civil Secretariat earmarked Rs60 million in the ADP for tribal areas for current fiscal year under the head of support to gender development, marginalised community and juvenile protection.
The government had legislated during the last few years to protect rights of women in the country. But the government has recently extended only Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Act to the tribal belt and set up Women Development Wing at the secretariat in Peshawar to facilitate women entrepreneurs of the area.
According to 1998 census, women are 47.99 per cent of the total population of the tribal areas. But, officials concerned said that no infrastructure including family courts, protection and detention centres for females were available in the area.
Major laws related with women rights included Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2004 (Act No I of 2005), which deals with honour-related violence, Protection of Women (Criminal Law Amendment) Act, 2006, which amends the controversial Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hadood) Ordinance 1979, etc., the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2010 (Harassment Amendments), Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010, Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 2011 (Acid Crime Act), Criminal law (Third Amendment) Act, 2011 (Prevention of Anti-women Practices Act).The National Commission on the Status of Women has been asking the government to extend scope of all laws related with the welfare and betterment of females in Fata.
An official at the secretariat, dealing with the human rights, said that the federal government had extended Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000 to Fata about eight years ago, but the political administration had done nothing on the ground so far.
Under the law, he said, political agents were bound to set up juvenile courts, jails, borstal institutions and appoint probation officers in their respective tribal agencies and frontier regions.
“Secretariat is asking political agents to take necessary measures regarding juvenile justice system, but they don’t bother,” the official said while seeking anonymity.
Presently, he said, there were no separate lockups for keeping juvenile offenders in tribal areas and they were kept with other prisoners in central jails of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that political agents were opposing extension of the law, because, what they said, the children at the age of 15 in the tribal areas could carry guns and it could not be implemented in the region.
Amazingly, the official said, political authorities and other departments were interested in the implementation of the laws which helped in revenue generation but they were ignoring the laws related to fundamental rights of the tribal people.
“So far there are no separate detention centres for juvenile and female offenders or victimised children and women in the entire tribal region,” he said, adding that the amount allocated in the ADP would be utilised for construction of infrastructure and advocacy. Sources said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masood Kausar had recently directed the quarters concerned to review all laws that had been introduced in tribal areas.
They said that secretariat’s coordination department sent letters to political agents and sought proposals and recommendation for the implementation of the laws extended to the area.
By: Khalilur Rehman Bacha
MINGORA: Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Swat girl who championed the cause of girls’ education and dared to criticise Taliban’s attack on schools and schoolgoing girls, was shot and seriously wounded here on Tuesday.
As she struggled for life in a Peshawar hospital, Taliban claimed responsibility for the chilling attack and threatened to target her again and kill her if she managed to survive this time.
Malala’s courage was recognised and praised worldwide and she was nominated for several international peace awards. Pakistan decorated her with a gallantry award.
Malala, who has two brothers, wants to be a politician. “I wanted to be a lawyer but I know there is need for good politicians, so I want to be a good politician to make good laws and good legislations. I want to do something for girls’ education,” she had told a private TV channel.
She was in a van going from school with two other girls. A masked man stopped the van while another jumped into the vehicle and asked who was Malala.
According to Swat’s District Coordination Officer Kamran Khan, the driver sensed the danger and tried to speed off but by then the gunman had shot her before jumping off and escaping.
Officials said Malala Yousufzai had been shot in the head. Two other girls also suffered injuries. Malala was first taken to a hospital in Saidu Sharif and was later airlifted by a military helicopter to the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar.
An official at the CMH said her condition was critical. According to late-night TV reports, a medical board will again examine her on Wednesday to decide whether she needed to be sent abroad for treatment. A military official said a single bullet had gone through her temple and hit her shoulder.
“The bullet has brushed her brain and she is in a semi-conscious state. She is being kept under observation. Her condition is critical,” the official said, requesting not to be named.
(According to western news agencies, Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said the group had carried out the attack after repeatedly warning Malala to stop speaking out against them. “We will target anyone who speaks against the Taliban,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“We warned her several times to stop speaking against the Taliban and to stop supporting western NGOs, and to come to the path of Islam.”)
Malala won international recognition for highlighting Taliban atrocities in Swat with a blog for the BBC Urdu website three years ago, when Taliban led by Maulana Fazlullah burned girls’ schools and terrorised the valley.
A neurosurgeon who examined Malala’s CT scan and MRI reports said she was in critical condition. DCO Kamran Khan said the military and police had launched a search operation to arrest the attackers. Her father, Ziauddin Yousufzai, was optimistic about recovery of her daughter.
“God willing my daughter will be alright,” he told reporters at the hospital.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti announced that Malala would be sent abroad for treatment. The military had cleared the tourist hotspot of Swat of militants in a 2009 operation.
Agencies add: Malala was 11 when she wrote the blog on the BBC website, which at the time was anonymous. She also featured in two New York Times documentaries. Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls who had been deprived of the right to get education by Taliban.
In a 2011 BBC news report she read out an extract of her diary that gave a sense of the fear she endured under the Taliban.
“I was very much scared because the Taliban announced yesterday that girls should stop going to schools.
“Today our head teacher told the school assembly that school uniform is no longer compulsory and from tomorrow onwards, girls should come in their normal dresses. Out of 27, only 11 girls attended the school today,” she said.
“My friend came to me and said, ‘for God’s sake, answer me honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taliban?’ “During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taliban would object.”
She received the first-ever national peace award from the government last year, and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by the advocacy group KidsRights Foundation in 2011. London-based rights group Amnesty International condemned the shocking act of violence against a girl bravely fighting for education.
“This attack highlights the extremely dangerous climate human rights activists face in northwestern Pakistan, where particularly female activists live under constant threats from the Taliban and other militant groups,” it said.