KARACHI: Women activists urged to lobby for rights
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Jan 25: Speakers at a meeting on Saturday urged the masses to forge unity and struggle hard to make the government review discriminatory laws.
Speaking at a discussion on violence against women organized by the Joint Action Committee for People’s Rights, they demanded that no person or organization be allowed to victimise the masses under the garb of religion.
Chief of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Justice (retd) Majida Rizvi, said the commission was reviewing the Hudood Ordinances and other such laws, and as soon as it got all the reports the commission would formulate its recommendations and send them to the government, which would take the final decision.
She said there were many laws to deal with different crimes, but unfortunately sometimes those laws were not implemented properly.
She urged women activists to lobby with political parties and parliamentarians so that they could formulate laws that were not discriminatory towards any section of the society. She expressed the hope that with a large number of women in the parliament, women’s issues would be discussed and solved.
Hina Jillani of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that it was the responsibility of the state to ensure that the rights of the marginalized sections of the society were not tempered with. She said women were being victimised and oppressed in the name of religion and socio-cultural traditions.
She said women activists had been struggling against the Hudood Ordinances for nearly two decades now and awareness had been created in the society and a substantial number of people wanted that those laws to be reviewed or abolished.
She asked what kind of message the government was sending to the world community when the country’s representative to the United Nations was involved in domestic violence and a man accused of being involved in gang-rape had been made provincial minister.
Zakia Ghori of the Jamat-i- Islami said that if Islamic laws were implemented in the country there would be no violence against women.
Anis Haroon, Ghazala Afghan, Nuzhat Kidwai and others also spoke. the question-answer session followed the speeches.
RESOLUTIONS: The meeting also passed resolutions calling for the formation of a special committee of MNAs and MPAs to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations given by the 1997 Enquiry Commission Report.
It was stressed that parallel systems of justice like jirgas and panchayats should be abolished and those involved in them be treated as criminals, and special trainings be imparted to those dealing with the women’s issues.
The demanded that the National Commission on the Status of Women should be made an independent body with powers to implement its recommendations.
