Pakistan Religious Freedom Initiatives: Leaders of Influence (PRFI) held a meeting with government officials and other stakeholders on July 24, 2015, at Marriott Hotel, Karachi. Meeting was  attended by Ms Saira Shahliani, MPA PPP; Mr Aijaz Ahmed Mangi, Secretary Labor; Mr Muhammad Sadiq, Director Minorities Affairs; Mr Anwar Ali Babar, Official Minorities Affairs; Ms Musarat Jabeen, Deputy Director, Women Development Department; Ms Anis Fatima, Assistant Director, Planning and Development Department; Mr Ghulam Haider Memon and Mr Abdullah Shah Ombudsman Sindh; Ms Farhat Moosa, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics;  Mr Abdul Rahim Moosvi, Sabiha Shah from Women Development Foundation, Pakistan; Mr Syed Moazzam Ali, Consultant TAF Project; and from AF Ms Mahnaz Rahman Resident Director, Karachi office, Ms Erum Javed Project Manager and Ms Fareeda Tahir Associate Programme Manager.

Ms Mahnaz Rahmanspoke about the various projects that AF is currently working on, with a special focus on Gender Equity Program, which is funded by USAID. While  introducing the project,  Ms Fareeda  Tahir said that PRFI is a project of Aurat Foundation in Sindh supported by The Asia Foundation.  She said that the purpose of the project was to deal with the issues that non- Muslims in Pakistan face.  It is for this purpose that she also mentioned some of the issues such as forced conversion, forced migration, hate speech in curriculum which have been identified through a  KAP survey including focus group discussions which was conducted at the grassroots level in districts such as Tando Allahyar Karachi etc by their consultant Mr Moazzam. She said that for many months now they’ve been working with their legal consultant Ms Maliha Zia Lari, parliamentarians, the relevant government departments, parliamentarian, civil society and other organizations in order to come up with a comprehensive law that deals with the issue of forced conversion in Sindh.

At this point the Secretary Labour said that all government departments had received a notice about the five percent quota for Minorities, therefore all the relevant departments are working hard to implement this quota. After this, Mr Moazzam, who was the consultant responsible for conducting the KAP survey to identify the issues of Minorities, spoke about the KAP survey and the focus group discussions that were conducted across various districts of Sindh.

Ms Sabiha Shah addressed the participants and said that the mindset of people needs to be changed through awareness.