July 31, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1424

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PESHAWAR, July 30: The NWFP government has decided to engage human rights experts to prepare recommendations in the light of the draft  gender reforms action plan to address women’s issues in a more concrete way.

The initiative has been funded by the Asian Development Bank for the federal and provincial governments.

The objective of the plan is to enhance the capacity of the departments for improving the status of women in the context of gender equality and governance.

The decision to engage human rights experts was taken at a meeting organized by the social welfare department last week, said an official on Tuesday.

The experts would prepare recommendations on key reforms, like political participation, institutional structure, women’s development in public sector, policy making and fiscal processes in the government.

Constitutional human rights expert Dr Fakhrul Islam, who presented his paper on the women’s development strategy in the post-Beijing scenario, told the meeting that Pakistan as a signatory to the International Women’s Convention, held in China in 1996, was bound to take steps for addressing gender gap.

He said the country’s representatives in the Beijing conference had done a remarkable job by linking the signing of the document with the condition that Pakistan would abide by only those clauses which were not contrary to the 1973 Constitution.

This provided an opportunity to Pakistan to take steps for the betterment of women without disturbing its Islamic values, norms and traditions, he said.

NWFP Social Welfare and Women’s Development Minister Hafiz Hashmat Khan, who presided over the meeting, said the Muttahida Masjlis-i-Amal government was making all out efforts for the betterment of women.

He said the provincial government was taking all the necessary steps to implement the international women’s conventions.

Officials said the NWFP government had discussed the draft report with  the plan’s Islamabad team at a meeting presided over by Hashmat Khan.   The government, after receiving recommendations from the experts,  would hold another meeting with the action plan’s team to finalize the recommendations before sending them to the provincial cabinet for approval, they said.