HYDERABAD: The Women Action Forum (WAF), Hedeerabad), on Sunday released its 2021-24 report on gender-based violence in Sindh.

The report titled ‘Counting the wounds’ put the total number of gender-based violence cases in the province at 2,564 showing a consistent rise. The WAF remained engaged in 70pc of these cases, it said.

The figures were shared at a gathering held in the local press club. It was attended by rights activists, journalists, development sector activists and academicians. These figures were compiled through monitoring of print, electronic and social media.

The participants expressed their concern over the rise in such cases, including harassment, suicide, murder, honour killing etc. Women felt unprotected due to government’s non-serious attitude towards the trend. WAF found that due to defective investigation, police became partner in the crime. It noted that in 90pc cases, perpetrators of the crime against women were from victim’s family.

WAF leader Amar Sindhu, sharing figures, said that cases of honour killing had substantially increased which was a matter of concern and that in most cases the accused were from women’s relatives.

Dr Arfana Mallah said these were not just statistics, but ‘wounds’ on smiling faces. She added that police didn’t register FIRs of victims. “Only the SSP concerned would respond to such nature of crime, and finally the officer also withdraws from pursuing it. Only SHOs prevail in these cases,” she observed.

Haseen Massarat said that cases of underage girls being subjected to sexual abuse were also on the rise. She stated that police left women at the mercy of media for a ‘trial’. She said men were least interested in hearing tales of abused women.

Poet Khalida Munir said that a large number of suicide cases among women were reported in 2023. She said even today women were killed on the pretext of marriage.

Shahnaz Sheedi said that women were not treated as human beings in our society; they were considered animals.

Prof Ismail Kumbhar, Suleman Abro, Ghurfrana Arain of HRCP, Ramesh Kumar Gupta and others also spoke.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2025