HYDERABAD: The Women’s Action Forum (WAF) held a webinar here on Friday to discuss increasing incidents of violence against women in Sindh.

Attended by representatives of the Women Democratic Front (WDP), Women Protection Cell (WPC), Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s (HR­CP) Special Task Force and other rights activists, it decided to launch a three-month-long awareness campaign for women’s rights, starting from this month.

Speakers expressed concern over increasing incidents of violence against women while the WAF representative shared data of such incidents with the participants. The data showed that new angles are being reported in such incidents. The participants included Haseen Musarrat Shah and Dr Arfana Mallah of the WAF, Marvi Awan of the WPC, comrade Marvi Latifi of the WDP, Aisha Dharejo of Sindh Sahai Sath, Hina Brohi advocate and others.

They agreed on a 10-point future strategy, resolving that the Waziran Chachar murder case of Jamshoro district should be investigated from all angles. They suggested that the case should not be discussed from legal point of view alone, but also analyse the tendency of increasing hate in society towards women. Fact-finding of the case should be conducted to ascertain circumstances leading to the incident, they added.

Rights bodies plan three-month drive

They said the case should be followed till its logical end and all those organisations intending to become part of the fact-finding team should remain part of it till the case was disposed of. The fact-finding team would take its notes relating to medico-legal documents, etc, and would make the report public, they added.

The meeting decided to share data of violence against women at a press conference or online meeting after collecting it in collaboration with all women’s rights organisations in the first phase of the strategy. It resolved to design a social media campaign for creating awareness that would last for three months and cover sharing of follow-ups, analysis and observations.

It decided to visit all districts of Sindh, hold protests, press briefings, meetings with bar associations and administrative officials. It said data would be released every month, which would reflect performance of police also with reference to the number of registered FIRs and arrest of accused as well as their acquittal/bail from court.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2020