Jirgas versus women

DESPITE a Sindh High Court ruling in 2004 banning jirgas, they continue to take place, often under the patronage of elected representatives. Many jirgas are known to set up a parallel system of justice which often runs counter to the law of the land. They have handed down death sentences in a cases that a court of law would handle differently. Such utter contempt for laws help jirgas fuel barbaric customs because people feel they can get away with murder, especially those committed in the name of honour. This shows that laws — no matter how well intentioned —alone cannot bring about a change. It is important that laws designed to root out social evils are firmly implemented if the wrongdoers are to be deterred. Moreover, the legal approach must be supported by on-going awareness campaigns on social ills and customs.

It is heartening that some people are now standing up to the customs that treat women like commodities and use them as compensation for excesses committed by men. There is the practice of karanh-ji-chattai, which is a fine imposed on a person for his/her involvement in karo-kari, which in itself is a crime. This practice has come into the limelight because the SHC in Larkana is hearing a petition on a jirga that was convened in Thull and attended by influential men who ordered the petitioner to hand over his 14-year-old daughter to settle an honour killing that took place over 20 years ago. This is preposterous and one must lend all support to the petitioner who has courageously stood up to the influential men who threatened him and his family with dire consequences if he went to the police. It is now a matter for the courts to decide but one can only hope that justice is seen as being done.

It is always difficult to understand why innocent women have to pay for crimes they have nothing to do with. One can understand, though by no means condone, that the ‘influential’ men like elected representatives who participate in jirgas do so in order to hold on to their power and influence. But it is incredulous for the higher ups in the parties they represent to turn a blind eye to such behaviour. But unfortunately this is what has been happening all long. If political parties are sincere about bringing about a change, they must first start with changes in-house and induct only those in their cadres who represent party policy in letter and spirit. Civil society also has a role to play. It must step forward and demand the implementation of the ban on the jirga. Much of the problem would be resolved if women were to be accorded the status that is their right.

Israel’s land grab

ISRAEL wants ‘more land and fewer Palestinians’. That is how Edward Said, the crusader for the Palestinian cause, summarised the Zionist state’s fundamental policy. On Tuesday, the Israeli government ordered the confiscation of more land outside eastern Al Quds to fill the gap between a major Jewish settlement and the holy city. The confiscation of the land will enable Israel to enforce contiguity between three existing settlements and Al Quds. A greater mischief behind the decision is to break, what a Palestinian Authority official called, Palestinian territorial continuity between the West Bank and the Jordan Valley. The other purpose of the land theft is to build a highway linking eastern Al Quds with Jericho in the West Bank. This road will be built, according to an Israeli army spokesman, on state land and on land which was appropriated — a reference to the land seized from four Palestinian villages. There is a big variety of fake reasons Israel uses to confiscate land. The stated pretexts include security needs, land lying unused, land being used for terrorist purposes, survey land (meaning its status is unclear), and land for development.

During the last 40 years, Israel’s occupation policy has drastically reduced the land owned by the Palestinians, increased the number of Jewish settlements, expanded the existing ones, diverted the Palestinian water sources to the Jewish colonies, and sprayed the grazing grounds with toxic chemicals to kill Palestinian-owned sheep. Also, as a matter of policy highways and bridges are so built that they plough through Palestinian villages and orchards. As Peace Now, an Israeli peace group, noted in one of its reports, 93 per cent of the land used by the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property acquired in violation of international law and Israel’s own laws guaranteeing property rights in occupied territories. The presence of 250,000 Israelis in the West Bank settlements, the 38-page report says, is a major obstacle to peace. Today, Israel controls 59 per cent of the West Bank, while 23 per cent of the land is under Palestinian civil but Israeli military control, leaving only 18 per cent under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Evidently, Israel wants to nibble even at this 18 per cent.

The latest Israeli confiscation move seems designed to sabotage the next month’s international Middle East peace conference called by President George Bush. Israel has no interest in a final peace settlement because the status quo suits it. The Arab world has no military power, the Hamas-Fatah civil war has rendered the Palestinian movement toothless, and the sole superpower’s diplomatic, economic and military might is at the disposal of the Zionist state. The periodic conferences are merely publicity stunts.

Isn’t human life precious?

THE Ravi is never more than the outline of a river for the most part of the year. That it should be as deadly as any other stream in the country is not just surprising. It is also terrifying and shocking. Even more so is the fact that three young boys’ death by drowning in it recently failed to create even a minor stir which means river deaths are not such an uncommon occurrence in Punjab’s capital. In the last three weeks alone, as many as five people have lost their lives to the river current and that too at a time when it is not at its strongest.

This is terrifying — because nothing is being done to ensure that this does not happen again. It is also shocking because most of the people who lose their lives to the river are minors. All the five people who drowned in the Ravi between Sept 16 and Oct 6 this year were aged below 18. This shows local authorities’ callousness towards the safety of the people who want to visit the river as well as the parents’ carelessness who allow their children to charter unsafe waters without sufficient training and safety equipment.

Unfortunately for the residents of Lahore, the Ravi is not the only dangerous watercourse that they have. The reports of a young girl’s drowning in an open sewer appeared in local newspapers only a few days ago and six people — again most of them children — drowned in an uncovered drain in the southern suburbs of the city during the last year. These numbers, in fact, betray a certain disregard for human life prevalent in equal measure among the city’s officials and its residents. The government has never given any hint that it wants to do something about it and the public does not even believe it to be an issue worth crying for. That a younger generation should pay for this indifference and apathy with their lives beats both compassion and imagination.

Time to break the silence

IT is time the silence was broken on the issue of child domestic labour in Pakistan. Attiqa, a 10-year-old, has been tortured viciously by her employer, a well-off contractor in Badami Bagh. Her eyelashes, eyebrows and hair were chopped off and she was severely beaten.

Her crime was a demand for her wages already very low and rarely given. Her mother, a widow, who had volunteered the services of her child, then eight years, for domestic labour, has been abducted.

SHO Chung refused to register the case. Suo motu notice was taken by none other than Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Resistance to including this form of child labour in the list of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) under ILO Convention 182 persists. Pakistan is a signatory to ILO Conventions 182 and 138 and the minimum age convention.

The government has ‘consultatively’ identified 34 different occupations termed as WFCL, but child domestic labour does not figure on it and there does not appear to be an inclination to categorise it as such. This form of labour is imperceptibly vicious because it is hidden behind doors and is invisible to the public eye.

The Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education has launched a modest programme for 1,000-1,500 children on child domestic labour in Rawalpindi and Islamabad which is only a drop in the bucket. Crude and dated estimates for this form of labour in four major cities of the country amount to only 240,000 cases which is an underestimation. There is an urgent need to undertake more robust studies on domestic labour involving children.

Child domestic labour refers to situations where children perform domestic tasks in the home of a third party or ‘employer’ under exploitative conditions (long working hours with little or no wages or where they are employed below the minimum working age). There is a gender dimension as more girls than boys work in this sector.

India and Nepal have passed laws on child domestic labour in 2006 and 2004 respectively. Despite poor implementation, public knowledge on the issue is widespread and in India public interest litigation is on the rise. Pakistan passed the Children’s Employment Act (CEA)1991, which is the umbrella law for child labour in its organised forms in the formal sector.

Many argue that this law needs to be reviewed for tighter implementation possibilities and challenged for its limitations of application to the informal sector. The government of Punjab since 2005 has suspended Sections 9 and 14 of the CEA 1991 dealing with the inspection of premises and appointment of inspectors to implement the 1991 Act.

Punjab with its large population is the largest violator of child rights, particularly with regard to child labour, notwithstanding the ‘parha likha Punjab’ campaign. The question is whether the CEA is at all adequate for covering child domestic labour as it exists in the informal sector, in homes that cannot be accessed by inspectors.

In 2005 and 2006, the parliamentary committee on human rights was taken on as an advocacy partner by the ILO to push forward the agenda of child domestic labour. Sadly, in spite of many consultations in each province and at the federal level there was no consensus on the issue.

The committee just treated it as a pending issue. Many argued that unless domestic labour was formalised, there would be no breakthrough in admitting child domestic labour as an issue. Some suggested that it was perhaps the most protected form of child labour in caring households to help families in poverty. Others suggested sanctity for protecting ‘socio-cultural norms and local contexts’ and asked the authorities not to force the issue when people were not ready for it.

So when will our people be ready for taking action against crimes against children? When will the ‘consultations’ outlive their euphemistic character, that is synonymous with ‘inaction’? When will the disconnect with ‘maar nahin pyaar’ in schools on the one hand, and violence against child domestic labour on the other be addressed? When will our citizens be ready for saving their young generations in order to establish a healthier and just social order?

I have argued in multiple forums that child domestic labour cannot be separated from violence against children. The degree of violence inflicted may be low or high but violence is inextricably linked to child domestic labour. As the latter’s continuum increases from low to high or in the case of a child worker accompanied by siblings or parents as part time help to an unprotected child spending uninterrupted time at the employer’s home without holidays or time off, the degree of violence also rises.

Moreover, this form of labour merges often with physical punishment, sexual torture, rape, trafficking, bondage, and in extreme cases, murder as in the case of the son of a rural influential in Sheikhupura district in 2005 who raped and then murdered his 15-year-old family maid. In spite of media projection, the culprit got away with minimal stress and an advisory period of ‘lying low’.

There is silence over so many critical issues in this country. The masses are silenced by the gruelling reality of poverty; silenced by norms and customs; silenced by authority; silenced by the supremacy of and respect for local contexts; silenced by the collusion and inertia of the public sector and civil society, and silenced by convenience above all.

The culture of silence on vital issues of human rights and care for our young must formally end. Whilst projects may be in full implementation as a way of livelihood for many on child labour including child domestic labour, the activism to address it fundamentally lies in abeyance.

The fate of Attiqa’s mother is still not known. The case has still not been registered. When will the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau, Punjab, known for its independence and an effective track record of handling beggars and camel jockeys, take up the cause of young domestic workers and the thousands of Attiqas languishing in the province? Operating under the Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act 2004, the Bureau must extend support to Attiqa to ensure that she wins justice, and set up a helpline for child domestic labourers.

We urgently need examples and practical models to save Attiqa and her fellow sufferers. We need to link them to the recently approved national Social Protection Strategy and the Children’s National Plan of Action, as well as to the multiple safety nets schemes that are currently being disbursed through the Pakistan/Punjab Bait ul Maal programmes in time for the elections. Surely Attiqa and her mother qualify for livelihood support schemes. Once found and supported, Attiqa’s mother will definitely cast her vote for the right candidate.

The writer is chairperson of the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA).

Email: itacec@gmail.com

Open-ended dialogue

Al Islam (Kabul)

UNITY is a divine command that has repeatedly been cited in the Holy Quran, in which Allah Almighty exhorts the Ummah that its glory, success and salvation lie in harmony. A fleeting look at history reveals working in unison helps nations acquire a remarkable degree of resilience even in the face of trying circumstances.

On the contrary, fragmentation not only spells disaster for people but also lands them in perpetual thrall and, more often than not, wipes them off the surface of the earth. It is primarily for this lack of social cohesion that our dear homeland is among the most backward states of the world.

Painfully aware that futile dissension is a course littered with impassable hurdles, why don’t we change to the preferred path of concord and mutual respect to lift our country out of abject penury? With a stronger sense of belonging to the same society and sustained commitment to a shared future, we can surely put Afghanistan on the road to much-needed progress. For this long-cherished change to come about, we have to shun internecine bickering, Orwellian instincts and petty political games in the supreme national interest.

Now is the time for all stakeholders to sit across the negotiating table in the spirit of rebuilding their country that can no longer afford to be held hostage to political skullduggery or gratuitous brinkmanship. With the climate for peace talks more propitious than ever before, what is urgently needed is sincerity of intent — not overblown arguments.

Willingness on the part of antagonists to talk out their differences plus international support for negotiations have presented an opportunity that must be seized. Mindful of the fact that the nation is weary of fratricidal wars, both the government as well as dissidents are expected to demonstrate leadership to make the exercise result-oriented. — (Oct 7)

Second round of peace jirga

Wahdat (Peshawar)

PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai, insisting that the ongoing wave of suicide bombings in his country is inconsistent with Islamic injunctions and Afghan traditions, has alleged this fratricidal war is the handiwork of outsiders. The presidential grumble about sinister foreign conspiracies hatched against Afghanistan has come at a time of heightened violence against Afghan and foreign security forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations.

Regrettably enough, the security situation has plummeted to an all-time low over the last six years even in Kabul, where suicide assaults are on the rise despite the deployment of a large number of foreign troops in the capital.

Before a regional peace jirga held in Kabul in October, Islamabad had been a favourite punching bag for Afghan leaders, with the president frequently reviling Pakistan-based miscreants for stealing into Afghanistan to mow down his compatriots, torch schools and blow up health clinics before fleeing to their sanctuaries across the porous frontier.

As the blame-game lingered on, Islamabad agreed at Washington’s behest to a Pak-Afghan peace forum attended by 350 delegates from each country.

That outpouring of optimism — turning out to be a fanciful idea — is gradually giving way to a new bout of frustration that has prompted Karzai to scapegoat aliens for his snowballing security woes. In the existing circumstances, he will be well-advised to lean on Pakistan to speed up preparations for a second round of the jirga scheduled to be held in Islamabad. Concurrently, he ought to push the jirga commissions to ensure implementation of the joint declaration issued at the end of the grand tribal gathering in Kabul. — (Oct 8)

–– Selected and translated by Syed Mudassir Ali Shah