Justice (Retd.) Shahiq Usmani

I have had the privilege of being associated. with Aurat Foundation for over 25 years. When i began my association with the Foundation it had just begun to make an impact. Considering that I was associated with legal profession and had always tried to champion rights of women in Pakistan, who due to our cultural ethos, sadly has been rather misogynistic, I did whatever I could to suggest or advocate introduction of laws that could improve the status of women in our country.

In this connection I did considerable amount of work on laws relating to “Honour Killing” and Marriage contract. While interacting with Aurat Foundation I came into contact with devoted and deeply committed men and women such as Justice (Retd.) Majida Rizvi, late Syed Iqbal Haider and late Justice (Retd.) Rasheed Rizvi. It was indeed a pleasure to work with them. However, at the risk of striking a discordant note I cannot avoid saying that inspite of great efforts of members of Aurat Foundation for improvement of the lot of women in our Society we always encountered difficulties because of inherent misogynistic tendencies of our nation. In order to give our women the right that they deserve it is important that our politicians should come forward to take the lead to first introduce legislation for betterment of women and then do whatever they can to enforce these. I wish all the luck and success to Aurat Foundation and its members.