Women's Human Rights in Pakistan-What has changed and how?

f by "recent years" you mean the last few decades, there has been a tremendous change in the situation of women's rights. The whole approach has changed from protection to rights. Earlier, it was that women needed protection. Even the Women's Commission report talked in terms of a division of labour between men and women. The woman was, naturally, given a secondary place in return for a monetary stipend to be protected. There was a different mindset altogether. In the 1980s, a more rights-based approach was taken to the status of women, but it has not gone deep enough. When we talk about how the situation has changed-it has changed in terms of women being more aware of their rights; women taking more opportunities where they have presented themselves; and women asserting themselves in different fields, such as in politics and economics. But as far as the basic unit of the family is concerned, which is where discrimination begins and bogs the woman down her whole life, very little has changed, even on paper.

There have been minor breakthroughs though. And these have been primarily because more women are entering the legal profession, and, more importantly, more women have been willing and able to take the risk of litigation. A woman lawyer can interpret laws from a gender perspective, but you still need a real client who wants to go all out, take the legal risk, and not succumb to pressure and compromise along the way. Many of these breakthroughs have come through case law, where women clients have had to suffer. At times, not even supported by their own families, these women have had to go through prolonged periods of uncertainties, and they have been brandished as brash women who are bucking social norms. It has been a difficult process for these women, and they need to be celebrated.

One example of how these changes have taken place was a legal case very early on with regards to a woman who was contesting an election. However, it died down and the question did not reach the height of legal precedent. That is, until female students in medical colleges challenged the law. Other than being supported by their families, what made it easier for these students was that it was not during the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq. Had it been, the case would not have seen the kind of positive response it did from the court. So eventually we did get relief from the Supreme Court and it did uphold Article 25 of the Constitution- "There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone"--which was already on paper was then realised. Following this, there were similar cases challenging discrimination, for example the one that changed the common practise where women were forced to change their domicile according to the domicile of the man she married.

WHRnet: Do you anticipate further changes in the next five years?

AJ: Yes of course, once the ball gets rolling and women begin to not only assert their rights, but they also have women's collectives, where there is thinking going on and where strategies are being planned. However, the existence of these collectives are under threat since they are organized around productive work or services, and this means that they need to be involved in a viable activity in order to continue to exist. For example, women's organizations, like in the past, can't continue to have sewing machine schools, since they will be redundant.

It is now a very competitive playing field for organizations because the resources available to them are shrinking. It is a war of ideas and it is a war of implementing those ideas. Only those collectives that can show results will get the resources.

WHRnet: What strategies have women in Pakistan been using in an effort to bring about equality and human rights for women? What has been effective/ineffective? What factors would you identify as the most important in terms of why and how these strategies have worked?

AJ: I think women have used various strategies to bring about human rights and equality for women. What has been missing, though, in Pakistan is a civil society that works for women's rights. There has never been a comprehensive strategy which is owned by all civil society, which lays out the tools, mechanisms and means we are to adopt.

Everybody has taken a different route. There are those who have tried to fight for women's rights within religious norms. There are others who have tried to make advances within the framework of human rights. And there are those who are not talking about equality but about equity. Their argument is that asking for pure equality, at a time when women are far behind in economic empowerment, would actually disadvantage a number of women. Others argue that economic empowerment can come when the concept of equality is advanced. So this is a classic horse and cart debate going on in Pakistani civil society.

The most effective changes have occurred when women have not depended on government mechanisms alone. Although many breakthroughs for women have come through the court system, if they had depended only on the courts then they would not have been successful. There was a lot of campaigning from the ground up to support these cases. For example, in the case of whether a woman can marry against the wishes of her parents, there was a very dynamic campaign both in the media and on the streets. The issue was being debated in every household and this campaign really caught on. If the courts really wanted to go against the wishes of the women, it would have been as difficult for them as going against the wishes of the ulema (the Muslim religious community).

Earlier, women could not compare their strength to the religious lobby-probably where street power is concerned they still cannot. But women have a single agenda- to advance their rights. The religious lobby, on the other hand, has various agendas and their focus is short lived on these issues. It is sharp, it is very stinging, but then they have to move on. Women stay with the issue and have a wider span of concentration; simply because it is their own survival they are fighting for.

I will give you another example, take custody cases. Again, the clients who fought it through had to bear a lot of criticism, allegations of immorality, of being promiscuous and child abusers. It took a long time, but they persevered. Perhaps it has been the toughest on women who are foreigners. These women came to this country to fight their cases and stayed on for a long time to do so. For example, in 1994 the Uzbek woman who came to fight for, and was eventually granted custody of her children. Her case became a human interest story for people. And because such cases strike a chord with people, courts succumb to the pressure of women. You have to appeal to and win over the kinder side of people rather than the wicked side of people. So that is also one of the strategies.

What has not been effective, as I said earlier, is when women completely depend on state machinery. Take the honour killing law for instance. Prior to drafting the honour killing law, the campaign by NGOs was carried out despite the government, and it became a huge issue in Pakistan. After it got so much attention, some civil society groups entered the campaign and forged a government-civil society partnership for drafting the legislation. Although many civil society groups were not party to it, nonetheless, the result was it was seen as a government-NGO partnership. However, the campaign was eventually unsuccessful in achieving its objectives and one of the main reasons being, many members of civil society involved in drafting the law were not lawyers or were non-practicing lawyers. This was a big mistake. Therefore a lot was left out of the legislation. I believe, non-governmental organizations must only undertake what they are best at doing. If a lawyer writes a report on economic reforms, she could probably give her input but she cannot bring out the end product. It was a pity, because the campaign was very successful to a point but then it dissipated and there was this huge triumphant misconception that we reformed the law. Whereas, nothing was reformed; instead, you've just prolonged the agony of the women being killed.

Strategies also cannot work when you don't have effective and independent state mechanisms. When the judiciary is less independent, you are less effective; when the parliament is not sovereign, you are less effective; and when political parties are not working and are just concerned with their own survival, you are less effective. If your outreach is restricted to a few NGOs, who do not have links to the grassroots, public opinion is not something they can actually form. You have to partner with civil society, such as the press club, the bar association and also the politicians. When these groups are fragmented it becomes very difficult to work, and you become ineffective. That is why, people like us argue, there is a very firm link between human rights and democratic development. You cannot have true freedom of expression or true independence of the judiciary without the democratic process and a democratic set-up.

WHRnet: How can meaningful links be made between local, national, regional and international strategies and mechanisms? And how important is it to establish such links?

AJ: This is a very important question. I think the Pakistani women's movement has been very successful in doing precisely that. And if they had not made those links, particularly during Zia-ul-Haq's regime, they would not have gotten anywhere. They would have been beaten domestically and nobody would have heard of it. It was not until the BBC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch gave coverage to what was happening to women in the country that did the world's attention actually come towards Pakistan; thereby influencing the decision makers here.

For Pakistan, regional linkages were extremely important for many reasons, of which I would like to elaborate two. One is that we were losing our natural social and cultural alliances and similarities. It was a society that was being Arabized. And when a society is Arabized, there is something artificial about it, yet you can't say what it is. People begin to lose their own indigenous cultures and replace it with elements of a foreign culture, without knowing what they are doing. Pakistan has cultural ties with India, Iran and Afghanistan. These are countries we border and have ethnic, religious and cultural similarities with. We have to bring these regional ties closer to home, so that Arabization of Pakistan becomes diluted.

Let me give you an example. I recently saw a program on CNN where they were showing a madrassa (religious school) in Pakistan and women were sitting there with white hijabs, with only their eyes showing. Now that is not Pakistan's culture. Can anyone show me a photograph from the 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s or anytime, where you had madrassas of this nature and women sat in those white hijabs? This is not our culture. But it is being portrayed as our culture and now has become a foreign fashionable culture. In the 60s, it was jeans. Now it is hijabs! And with it comes a political thinking, a certain ideology--like I am sure there may have been with jeans at that time also. With this, however, there is not only a certain ideology, but also membership to an organized club of women who are then manipulated.

There is another reason it is important to have regional links and keep each other informed and involved. It seems as if every country in the region wants to compete with each other in their worst record rather than with their best record. So if Maldives, for example, can ban people of all religions except Islam from being nationals, one day we in Pakistan will be given the example of Maldives. Just like now Nepal is constantly given the example of Pakistan, that if the army can rule there it can rule in Nepal. We have to make more partnerships in the region and expose people from different countries in the region to each other, so that there is a common feeling of where we should be heading.

Even in terms of development of law, if we take regional precedents that can be very helpful. If there is a breakthrough case in India, we use it here in Pakistan. If there is a breakthrough here, it is used in Bangladesh. We should also learn from each other's good practices as well.

WHRnet: How can governments and private actors be held to account for their actions?

AJ: International human rights activists are increasingly looking at non-state actors, particularly in terms of denial of religious freedoms and violence against women. Violence against women is, for the most part, perpetuated by non-state actors. But there is an obligation on the state to ensure that impunity is not given to those non-state actors, and therefore it becomes very important to bring the state into it. The state may not itself be discriminating against women but when it knows that there is no equality of women in cultural or social terms, the state is obliged to take, what we call, affirmative action. This is also known as the positive obligation of the state, and is particularly pertinent in cases of violence against women, but also in other areas like denial of religious freedoms, rights of children and indigenous people. It is also important regarding sexual minorities. There have been cases were law enforcement agencies have threatened and tortured people because of their sexual orientation. However, there is also social discrimination against them which the state may not be involved in but by its inaction the state in a way tolerates it. So if the state tolerates the abuse, it can be held responsible because it is indirectly linked to state attitudes.

WHRnet: What tools or resources would be most useful to women in Pakistan in terms of translating "human rights on paper" into tangible, positive change in the lives of women?

AJ: I think what is more useful than tools and resources, is for women to draw out a blueprint of how they can work towards making human rights on paper more tangible and positive. If by tools you mean what are the various ways that they can do this then one tool can be through the press. This means that more people who believe in women's rights and human's rights have to be cultivated in the press. Half the battle is being won or lost in the media.

Electronic media today is also extremely important, not only in Pakistan but the world over. Women have to be very clear that they have to use all the tools currently in vogue. For example, the Internet is one of the new technologies people are using. Rather than staying with the old method of having posters-which nobody sees-women, today, have to think like multinational companies and use all those tools that multinational companies use.

Yes it is true, when we are talking of technology, large parts of our countries may not have that kind of technology and therefore we cannot rely only on modern methods. We have to use other tools as well. I think the use of culture is a very effective way of promoting the rights of women. We have seen that street theatre has got women, not just women but communities, to debate and reflect. Changing the mindset is the most difficult thing. It is unfortunate that we do not have a good theater/cinema culture in Pakistan. For example, many of the films on women's rights made in India are very popular in the paralegal centers we have in Lahore. More people come to the centers to watch these films than anything else, and they have a very wholesome debate after each film. So if portrayed in an emotional and sensitive manner, I think it is effective.

Another tool that women have not used in our country, which I think is a mistake, is influencing young people in educational institutions. We have worked with trade unions and perhaps have even made inroads in the upper echelons of society, but not with the younger generation in the colleges and schools, which is perhaps 40% of the entire population.

We also need to engage more professional women, for example, in the airline industry, the nursing profession, women in the film industry. These are all very important spokespeople for the cause of women's rights.

I believe there is much more women's organizations and human rights organizations can do in Pakistan. If you listen to many of the FM radio stations in the country, many of them are religious based. We need to counter that and when the opportunity presents itself, we need to use the Radio as one of our tools. Also, a lot of women feel that they can promote women's rights through religious teaching and a reinterpretation of religions. I do not know how much success they have had, but that is another strategy people are using.

I think when you are talking of the "gains on paper" being translated into tangible and positive changes, there have been some-because, frankly, if you give women rights or protection on paper, and if they are victimized then they have to use them. So for example, the gains that we made in family laws, women have no choice but to use them and they thus become tangible gains. We did not have interim maintenance for children or wives earlier, but we have it now and there are a lot of women availing of it. Also in terms of local body elections, when the opportunity was given, you had women contesting from everywhere. And, at that time, I remember almost every political party said 'we will not have so many women contesting', but we had no dearth of women candidates. So I think gains on paper have made tangible changes in the lives of women.

Over the years, you will see, that when our courts have been independent-I would not say absolutely independent, but more independent-there is more liberal jurisprudence coming out of the courts. In each of those periods you will find important precedents where women have taken the opportunity and gotten tangible results. I think women could get more tangible results, in say bringing about changes to the labour law. They have not been able to do that. But then again, trade unions are banned. Unless you have freedom of association you cannot really effectively assert you rights.

source:www.awid.or