AAWAZ Provincial Forum met with Provincial Election Commission, Punjab

A meeting of AAWAZ Provincial Forum (APF) Punjab was held with Provincial Election Commission, Punjab (PECP) on 17 Septemeber, 2015 at the office of the Commission. A 12 members delegation of AAWAZ Provincial Forum  met with Provinical Joint Election Commissioer Mr Ishfaq Sarwar. At that occasion Director General Local Government & Public Relation Officer, PECP, Mr Huda Ali Gohar  and AAWAZ Consourtium partner SPO Regional head were also attended the meeting. 

The objective of the meeting was to introduce gender sensitive symbols and procedures during upcoming LG Elections. The points which APF members discussed with the PECP included: i) allotment of gender sensitised symbol to women candidates on general and reserve seats, ii) separate counter for women during scrutiny of nomination papers of women candidates, iii) special arrangements for pregnant women, persons with disability and senior citizens on polling day, iv) selection of suitable place for women polling stations, iv) coordination and collaboration for running voter education campaign.

AAWAZ Provincial Forum organized a meeting with Provincial Election Commission of Punjab to introduce gender sensitive symbols and procedures during upcoming LG elections. Meeting was facilitated by Auart Foundation. Meeting was chaired by Joint Election Commissioner, Punjab, Mr Ishfaq Sarwer.  Participnats shared their experiences about symbol. A number of women withdrawn from election due to insensitive symbols. Director Local  Government Election shared the list of symbols. Particiants showed their concerns and  observations on them because all were patericahal rooted notions and gender streotypies. Typical social mindset was refelected through these allotments.

Resultantly, PECP welcomed the APF concerns and promised to incorporate the suggestions in polling schmes. It were deceided that PECP  would issue  instructions to ROs such as providing the choice to women candidates for selection of symbol  and alloting gender sensitive symbols, setting up special counter for women candaidates during scrutiny of nominatations, special treatment would be given for preganent women, women with disabilities and senior citizen on election day. 

Furthermore PECP will ensure that women polling station would be on ground floor and also ensure the proper boundry walls and toiletry facilities. It should be setup at safe places by keeping in view of women access and mobility.  PECP will instruct to district PECP office to participate in voter education activities.  

In the end of meeting, Mr Ishfaq Sarwer appricated the civil society efforts and acknowledged that civil society organizations always facilitated PECP. He said that civil society orgnizations campaign on voters’ education will help us to increase the voters turn out.  He said that PECP offices will fully cooperate to APF. Any violation and camplaint which we would  received from APF, PECP would address on priority basis. He also offered to visit PECP monitoring cell which is constituted recently in PECP building. Participants visited it. He shared the number of helpline to register the campalint.  
 

Dialogue on rediscover the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) organized by WLP

Ms Rabeea Hadi, Director  Advocacy and Ending Violence  Against  Women, Aurat Foundation, and Liaison Person of Women’s Learning Partnership, participated in as conference on ‘The World We Seek: Reigniting the Dialogue on Human Security’.  She participated in the conference as a speaker on ‘Rule  of youth in combating extremism – a case study from Pakistan’. The conference was organized on 14 September, 2015, at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, Washington DC.  The objective of the conference was to rediscover the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). 
 
Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP) and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies invited the women leaders from all over the world for the conference  which was organized in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing. 
Discussants focused on the relationship between human, social, economic, and environmental rights and development and peace, and share proven models for alleviating poverty, improving health and sanitation, and countering violent extremism.
 

Conference called for constitutional protection to local

A national consultation on constitutional protection of  Local Governments  was organized by AAWAZ program consortium partners, namely Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO), Aurat Foundation, Sungi, and South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP- PK), on 10th September, 2015, at Margalla hotel.  The dialogue was the continuation of AAWAZ program’s ‘AAWAZ  Utha’ campaign on Local Governments strengthening. 


Apart from civil society members, prominent legislators particularly members of Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms attended the  consultation. The parliamentarians spoke and pledged to support the move of a constitutional amendment in the 140-A of the constitutional providing time frame to hold Local Government elections. Legislators regarded the dialogue a timely initiative of the AAWAZ program as the Committee on Election Reforms is likely to submit the recommendations to the National Assembly  on strengthening local governments in Pakistan. Prominent of the parliamentarians included Senator Mohsin Laghari, Independent, Senator Farhat Ullah Babar, PPPP, Senator Mian Ateeq, MQM, Ms. Naeema Kishwar, MNA-JUI-F, Senator Sitara Ayyaz, ANP,  Ms Maliha Khan, MPA-KP Assembly, Ms Anisa Zeb Tahir Khali, MPA, QWP, KP Assembly, and Dr.  Araish  Kumar, former MNA from minorities.  
The Legislators and members of parliamentarian committee on elections invited detailed recommendations of AAWAZ consortium partners to strengthen Local Governments and representation of the women, minorities and excluded groups. The participants also spoke about the role of provincial governments. The dialogue between parliamentarians and civil society organization concluded with consensus that strengthening Local Governments require both constitutional protections by National Assembly as well as change of mindset of the provincial governments to devolve powers at the local levels through national finance commission.  
 
Local government system needs constitutional protection to be more effective and efficient in Pakistan because it lost its sustainability due to lack of legal authorization, said Mr. Naseer Memon, Chief Executive SPO, at the opening of consultation. 


Mr Naeem Mirza, Chief Operating Officer, Aurat  Foundation, added that although Article 140-A provides adequate constitutional, political, administrative and economic provisions for holding local government elections by provincial government but unfortunately provincial governments avoid the devolving the power to  local governments and  hence always use delaying tactics to hold  LG  elections, and  thus  obstruct its true soul by making it less authorized at local level while implementation. 
Ms. Naeema Kishwar, MNA-JUI-F, and member Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, said the Committee proposed 145 days for re-election of local government.  The  Committee is  also  working on other  concerns like number of  polling  stations and  proposed  each  polling station  after one  kilometer.  The Committee also  proposed training  of polling agents  and political workers, she further  said.  The sub-committee of the Committee on Electoral Reforms will put these recommendations on National Assembly’s website, and hence the civil society and human rights activists may analyze and further  suggest  recommendations. 


According to 18th amendment, it is the responsibility of the provincial government to play their role in devolving powers to districts through local government system, Mr. Sajid Mansoor Qaisrani, Chief Executive Sungi Development Foundation delineated.
 
Senator Aneesa,Zaib Tahirkheli, QWP, opinioned  in the consultation while strictly condemning the decision of provincial government not to hold the elections on specific seats directly and also focused that this is against the law to deprive the voters from their right to choose their representatives directly because in this way true representation would not come in front. 

Mr. Zafar ullah Khan, an eminent political activists,  researcher and Chief Executive of Centre for Civic Education,  demanded that local government elections should be held directly on special seats as done in Balochistan and KP and they further added that all political parties and civil societies is condemning this act of provincial government.

Mr. Farhat Ullah Babar, Senator and eminent political leader added that political parties challenged this amendment in court and hoped that court would do justice in this case. He added that devolution of power is mandatory at the moment to serve the interest of common people in Pakistan. Consistence efforts are required to make amendments in the constitution. 

Ms. Maliha Khan, MPA-KP Assembly, lauded that local government system is the basic unit of the democracy and the democratic process would remain incomplete without strengthening the local government system.
 

Visually impaired students sensitized on sexual violence and importance of education.

 A 1-Day activity was conducted with visually impaired children at Government Girls Blind School, a boarding school, at Shams Abad Rawalpindi, Pakistan.  It was held on 8 September, 2015, as part of celebrating International Literacy Day.

The activity was organized and conducted by Aurat Foundation in joint collaboration with Garden of Hope Taiwan. In total 58 blind girls studying in grade 5th to 10th and 12 teachers participated in the activity. The activity was divided into two sessions where theme of session one was ‘Child Abuse & Violence Against Women & Girls’. This session was conducted by Ms Rabeea Hadi of Aurat Foundation. Session two was conducted by Mr Muhammad Zeeshan, Psychologist working with Pakistan Foundation Fighting Blindness, and theme of session two was importance of education.

The broader objective of the activity was to educate girl children with disabilities who are more prone to violence and discrimination. The need was realised after the reports that children in Pakistan, irrespective of their gender, are being subject to heinous sexual violence.

The staff and students expressed concern over the hygiene situation of the school. They said that drinking water, bedrooms, kitchen and washrooms of the school lacked hygienic environment and requested us to communicate their concerns with donors and sponsors. They also expressed concerns over minimum provision of recreational activities for the students because of unavailability of funds.

 

Two Days National Training of Trainers (ToT) held with police facilitators/instructors (7-8.9.2015)

A two days National Training of Trainers (ToT) was held on September 7-8, 2015, at Sihala Police College, Rawalpindi. The theme of the training was ‘Pro-Women Laws and Gender Sensitive Investigation’. The training was arranged by Aurat Foundation under its GBV Advocacy & Capacity Building project.

The training, facilitated by National Police Bureau (NPB) under the MoU signed between Aurat Foundation and NPB, was attended by 26 participants including 9 females and 17 males from the four provinces of the country and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). Majority of them were inspector ranked officers and were stationed in different police training schools and colleges of the country. 

On the first day of the two-days training, Ms Rabeea Hadi, Director Advocacy & EVAW of Aurat Foundation, briefed the participants on the objectives of the training and Aurat Foundation mission as well as its association with NPB and other GBV response government departments. She further discussed the concept of gender and social scaling of ‘man’ and ‘woman. Ms Maliha Zia, senior lawyer and gender specialist, conducted group work by the participants to further dig down the concept of gender and to understand various biological differences and socially assigned roles differences between men and women. 

On the second day of training Ms Sumera Malik, National Coordinator GBV Advocacy project, discussed the concepts of violence against women and its types. She divided the participants in four groups and assigned them different age groups of men/boys and girls/women. She further asked them to prepare a chart presentation of the types of violence faced by boys/men and girls/women in each age group. Each group presented their findings to Ms  Sumera Malik while summarizing the findings of all groups concluded the session that both boys and girls face the same kind of violence at young age but as they grow up, girls become the victim of more types of violence and with greater intensity. 

The training on day two was further forwarded by Mr. Muhammad Haider Imtiaz, Advocate Islamabad High Court, by discussing pro-women laws legislated for the protection of women rights at the federal level as well as provincial levels. He discussed salient features of the constitution, Domestic Violence Bills of Balochistan and Sindh, The  Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Elimination of Custom of Ghag Act, 2013, The Punjab Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Act, 2015 etc. with participants. It was a highly interactive session where questions of the participants with objective answers based on sound knowledge of law and Pakistan Penal Code, of the trainer.
The two days training was closed post certificate distribution ceremony and the participants gave a written commitment of conducting such trainings based on the learning from this ToT, at their assigned training schools and colleges.
 

Pakistan Religious Freedom Initiatives organized training for police on minority rights (29-30.8.2015 )

Pakistan Religious Freedom Initiatives: Leaders of Influence (PRFI) held two one-day training sessions with Police officials from 29th to 30th August, 2015 at Hotel Movenpick, Karachi. The main objective of these training sessions was to make the officials aware about the gaps in enforcement of regularity framework and about the issues related to Minority issues. It was especially for the Police Officers, to aware those about the recent laws passed on the rights of minorities. Mr Niaz Siddiki, former IG Sindh, Ms Fouzia Tariq, HR Defender and Mr Naeem Zeeshan were the trainers on both days.


On the first day of training, Ms Erum Javed, Project Manager, spoke to the participants about PRFI which is being implemented by Aurat Foundation and shared the objectives of the workshop with the participant.


Ms Fouzia Tariq gave the presentation on Human Rights Constitution of Pakistan, UDHR, Mr Niaz Siddiki covered the Child Marriages Restrained Act 2013, Domestic Violence Act 2011, Acid Burn Act 2011and its impact on minorities. Moreover, Mr Naeem Zeeshan delivered a session on Gender and Minority rights.


A certificate distribution ceremony was held and Chief Guest Mr Ghulam Qadir Thebo , former Additional IGP Karachi, was requested  to  present  the  certificates. Certificate distribution session was followed by a tribute to Martyrs of the Pakistan Police through a candlelight vigil, Mr Qadi Thebo briefly shared the issues of the minorities as well as appreciated the initiative that Aurat Foundation had taken under this project and hoped that this collaboration would continue so that the police force could be trained on various topics such as gender and minority rights in the future as well.
In the end, the participants were asked to fill the evaluation form by Fareeda Tahir. Police officials appreciated the efforts of Aurat Foundation and stated that such trainings should be arranged more often. In the end, Ms Erum Javed  concluded the session with a vote of thanks to Mr Abdul Qadir Thebo, trainers and the participants and shared that Aurat foundation will continue its activities on the sensitization of minority issues with police trainers in future as well.
 

Aurat Foundation demanded support for acid attack victims

Aurat Foundation and Dastgir Legal Aid Center along with two acid victims and their families held a press conference, on August 25, 2015, Karachi, to demand medical treatment and financial help for the victims.

“Acid is so easily accessible, anyone can buy it whenever one wants. We want it to be sold only under license, with the buyers also submitting a copy of their national identity card to the sellers”, said Mahnaz Rahman, Resident Director, Aurat Foundation.

It was demanded that shops selling acids should be sealed. The law is in place but not implemented. There are also many glitches in the system, which allows the perpetrators to flee without being convicted. “We need better police investigations, trials and treatment for victims.  Offenders should be given severe punishments, to set an example for the future and financial help should be provided to the victims”,  said Mr Saifuddin, City Head, Dastgir Legal Aid Center..

Pakistan Religious Freedom Initiatives organized a meeting with Religious Freedom Caucus

Pakistan Religious Freedom Initiatives: Leaders of Influence organized a meeting of Religious Freedom Caucus (RFC) on 22nd August, 2015 at Moven Hotel Pick, Karachi. Among the prominent participants were Ms Syeda Shahla Raza, Deputy Speaker Sindh Assembly, Ms Iram Khalid, MPA PPP, Ms Nusrat Abbasi, MPA- PML-F, Ms Kulsoom Chandio, MPA PPP, , Mr Ali Imran, TAF Consultant, Ms Shahnaz Sheedi, SAP-PK Sindh, Mr M. Parkash N.L.D, Mr Saleem Michail, Justice Helpline, Mr. John, B.T.I, Mr Nadeem Shaikh, President Justice Helpline, Ms Nadia Tariq Ali  and Mr M. Kashif Kamal represented The Asia Foundation in the meeting.

Ms Erum Javed welcomed the honorable parliamentarians and shared the objectives of the meeting and Ms Nadia Tariq Ali shared the said highlights of the project. She stated that under PRFI project, we aim to bring laws for the Minorities. 
Aurat Foundation shared four bills: Force Conversion Bill, Hindu Marriage and Separation Bill, Christian Marriage and Separation Bill and Minority Commission Bill with the members of the minority Caucus. 
 
Similarly Ms Shahala Raza recognized the fact that the parliamentarians are very cooperative and would submit the bill with the help of the Secretary Minorities. Since Sindh is a progressive province, there is no tension from the opposite party in relation to the bill. 
Ms Erum Javed said that we all are working for the same cause and we have positive support from Minority Caucus Sindh. RFC members were very proactive since they had already passed various resolutions for support of minorities. 
 
Ms Nadia Tariq Ali, Program Manager (TAF), stated that Sindh is a progressive province and it has passed many bills and Resolutions regarding women rights. Thereafter, it is expected that such steps would also be under taken for minority rights.  Mr Ali Imran, Consultant TAF and the trainer, discussed the global perspective of Religious Freedom Caucus and recent scenario of the legislation on minorities in Pakistan. He appreciated the achievements of the Sindh Minority Caucus.  
 
Members of RFC shared the Resolution passed unanimously in Sindh assembly for the protection of religious minorities in Sindh. They discussed the strategy of consultation of bills submitted by Aurat foundation/PRFI. There were two opinions in the meeting regarding the submission of laws in the Assembly. Ms Shala Raza and Ms Irum Khalid suggested that in the next Assembly session, the bill should be submitted to every Political Party and under their consent; it can then be submitted in the standing committee. However, Ms Nusarat Sehr Abbasi had the opinion that the bill should initially be tabled from Minority Caucus and later be submitted in the Assembly through the Governor or General Secretary. Meeting adjourned on a thanks note by Nadia Tariq Ali and Erum Javed from Aurat foundation.
 

Ms Mahnaz Rahman Receives ‘Women Excellence Award’

Ms Mahnaz Rahman, Resident Director, Aurat Foundation’s Karachi office received ‘Women Excellence Award’ at the International Conference on Women Leadership, held on Pakistan’s Independence Day, the 14 August 2015. The Award, which was presented by Ms Reham Khan, is given to seasoned women professionals in various categories on the exemplary services rendered by them in their respective fields.

Other recipients of the Award include Ms Maryam Nawaz, Dr Fehmida Mirza, Ms Mahira Khan and Ms Tahira of Army Public School, Peshawar.

Ms Sherry Rehman, Senator PPP, and Mr Nisar Khuhro, Minister  for  Information, Sindh,  were among speakers at the conference, and Ms Reham Khan was the Chief Guest. 

Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch visited Aurat Foundation

Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch, former Member National Assembly (MNA) and Senator, visited Aurat Foundation Quetta office on 13 August, 2015. He discussed  in details  the ‘new emerging political dimensions of Balochistan in the perspective of Gwadar Mega Project and Pak-China economic corridor’.

During the discussion he highlighted lacunae in electoral and local government systems of Pakistan. He said that, members of provincial assembly do not want to transfer the powers to grass root level and keep the budget intact which causes failure to local government system.

Showing his concerns on Gwadar Mega Project and Pak-China economic corridor he said that, those will benefit China only and do not provide any development to Balochistan and Pakistan.

Current political situation in Balochistan, Pakistan’s foreign policy with neighbor countries and provincial autonomy was discussed during meeting. Dr Abdul Hayee said that, there is a major security risk in Balochistan right now and democracy is the only way to overcome the issues currently prevailing in province. He said that, his struggle will continue for the rights of Balochistan. He stressed that, every individual should play his/her part for the prosperity of Balochistan and Pakistan.

He praised the efforts of Aurat Foundation for playing key role in the development of society and thanked staff for sparing their time for meeting. At the end, Mr  Haroon Dawood,  Resident Director AF, Quetta, handed over publications and reading material to Dr. Hayee.