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Pakistan: Conditions for women are more precarious on International Women's Day 2009
Asian Human Rights Commission Press Release - March 8, 2009
Much more political space has been given to women's issues in Pakistan in recent years. The Musharraf administration passed the Women's Protection Bill (amending the repressive Zinna and Hudood Ordinances) and increased the involvement of women in parliament; Benazir Bhutto, the country's first female prime minister, ran for a third time, and when she was assassinated her husband won the presidency, partly on a platform that championed the rights of women; Zardari's cabinet contains the Muslim world's first female speaker of parliament along with several other top female politicians, and it has been working on the country's first ever bills on domestic violence and sexual harassment in the work place. Some might say that on International Women's Day 2009 things have never looked so good; however in this case, looks are deceiving.
Women are better represented in parliament, but except for those in the general seats they are not directly elected. Instead they are nominated by their parties, allowing male ministers to handpick the female delegates that best suit them. Many of these women are quiet on gender issues, and some like law maker Nafisa Shah (considered an eminent woman's rights champion) have even compromised their activism for political gain. Ms Shah helmed a limp, inept probe into the honour killing of Taslim Solangi in her constituency last year and was eventually replaced by another officer.
Zardari's appointment of female ministers was significantly canceled out by his choice of other ministers who have been implicated in brutal crimes against women. Most recently promoted was Abid Hussain Jatoi, currently charged with kidnapping, and who condemned a couple (currently in hiding) to death at the head of a jirga court. Before his appointment to minister of education, Mr Hazar Khan Bijarani was sentenced by the Supreme Court for a jirga that handed over five children in marriage to settle a dispute in 2005; Mr Sana Zehri, a state minister, declared in the senate last year that the jirga-ordered burial of five women alive was a justified local custom; Mr Amin Fahim, senior minister in the federal cabinet used a jirga to marry his two sisters to the Quran, Islam's holy book. This list goes on.
Not only does there not appear to be much movement to tackle these already-illegal tribal courts – and the extra judicial death sentences they deal to women – but those involved in them are being given more power, and in most cases, protection. Jatoi's first official act as minister this month was allegedly to send a threat to the family of the girl he's trying to have killed.
These tribal courts are a reaction to the gradual liberalization of women in urban pockets, and they have a stranglehold over women in rural areas – where an estimated 12.5 million are still denied the right to vote. To stay in power, politicians tread gently around religious radicals and few arrests are ever made after an honour killing or abuse. In the AHRC's most notorious cases of violence against women last year – one in which eight women were buried alive, another which saw a girl mauled by dogs and shot – no one has yet been prosecuted. For both it took mass campaigns to remove scapegoats from custody and charge the high powered perpetrators, who remain at large anyway.
The government's lack of control over religious fundamentalists has also seen at least 200 girls' schools burned down over the past year. Its new agreement to enforce Islamic law in large areas of the North West Frontier Province, including the Swat valley, will likely see more restrictions placed on the education of girls. On a positive note, successful campaigning against the abduction, marrying and forced conversion of young minority girls by the AHRC and its supporters has seen a drop in such cases.
On another note, the government’s lack of control over the security forces has equally grave implications for women here. New information gathered by the AHRC has revealed that around 141 women are missing from the militarized Balochistan province, and some, like 25-year-old Zarina Marri, have been kept in military torture cells and raped repeatedly. Until recently the government has denied involvement with any of the cases, but in the last week (under pressure from rebel groups holding UN staff member John Solecki) has admitted to holding seven women.
The domestic violence and sexual harassment bills are taking a very long time to be pushed through into laws, and the rates remain extremely high. Reports from NGO, the Aurat Foundation in February 2009 cite 7733 cases in the print media this year: 1,762 cases of abduction, 1,516 cases of murder, 844 cases of injury, 472 cases of honour killing, 439 cases of rape and 579 cases of suicide in the past year - the vast majority of honour killings being carried out by spouses or family. However many female victims of violence do not report it. Pakistan’s Additional Police Surgeon (APS) Dr Zulfiqar Siyal has announced that 100 women are raped every 24 hours on average in Karachi city alone. Even with the proposed bills, women will have to work in an unflinchingly male system, against prejudice from policemen, lawyers and judges. There are few women in these institutions and no kind of gender sensitization has been undertaken. The Aurat Foundation recorded 117 incidents of violence against women while in custody last year, including cases in which women were kept off-site and raped repeatedly as a form of interrogation.
If a woman does take her husband to court and get a divorce, her socio-economic prospects aren't bright. The informal sector has grown nine fold since the seventies, and is built on women and minors who work in factories or offices without a contract, unprotected by labour laws. They have no right to sick leave, maternity leave or other forms of compensation, and work on average between ten and twelve hours per day.
Certain pro-women policies are being implemented, such as in Lower Sindh, where plots of land will be registered in the name of the woman in each family unit. The government has spoken of creating more employment opportunities and of loan programs for women, but has not yet acted in this respect, and in terms of what still needs to be done the proposals are minor. The advances at the top and in the cities need to be taken onto the street, into the villages and practically enforced.
In Pakistan’s pledge for re-election to the Human Rights Council in 2006, it claimed that:
...attention is being given to the social and economic emancipation of women. All forms of violence against women are punishable under the law including the infamous ‘honour killing’. Pakistan will continue to promote awareness of human rights in the society by introducing human rights component in educational and curricula at all levels and mass awareness campaigns through media and civil society with particular emphasis on the rights of vulnerable groups including women, children and minorities.
On the international day for women, three years later, the AHRC are waiting to see such pledges honoured.
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
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