Key Thematic Areas
Women's Economic Empowerment

Aurat Foundation works to enhance women's economic status by advocating for their right to resources, land ownership, and decent work. The focus remains on addressing the challenges faced by rural women in the agricultural sector and home-based workers, ensuring they receive fair wages and social security coverage.

Women's Political Empowerment

This remains a key area of interventions and includes specific inputs in political education and activism to ensure women's involvement in defining their political and social environment. Interventions include seminars, public meetings and dissemination of information. Specific inputs highlight the role and performance of women legislators, leaders and councillors and the measures taken for strengthening their role in political and decision-making institutions.

Ending Violence Against Women and Girls

Ending violence against women and girls is critical for creating an enabling environment for women. Aurat Foundation advocates and undertakes measures such as policy reform and positive legislation for elimination of violence against women and implementation of procedures to support female victims and survivors of violence. Another key area of AF is to work for total repeal or reform of discriminatory laws against women and minorities, such as the Hudood Ordinances, Law of Evidence, Qisas and Diyat Provisions in Pakistan Penal Code and the Citizenship Act.

Relief, Rehabilitation and Disaster Management

Aurat Foundation actively participates in relief and rehabilitation efforts during natural disasters. The "Motherland Flood Relief Campaign for women and children" highlights AF's commitment to providing gender-sensitive aid, ensuring that the specific needs of women and children are met during emergencies and long-term recovery processes.

Democratic Governance & Accountability

Aurat Foundation works for building and strengthening the foundations of a sustainable democracy; national consensus on strengthening participatory, transparent and accountable governance; impartial, free and fair elections to restore the electorate's rapidly declining faith in the electoral process. Issues like disenfranchisement of women, intra-party women's quotas on general seats, access to disaggregated data are also highlighted. Engagement with democratic institutions through planning and development of legislative agendas is AF's core strength. Promotion of culture of accountability through thematic studies and advocacy campaigns is also undertaken.

Health and Education of Women and Girls

Health and education are key priority areas of focus for Aurat Foundation. High rate of maternal mortality in Pakistan due to inadequate healthcare and social determinants, and limited access to reproductive health services, including family planning, prenatal care, and safe abortion are our major concerns. So is the case with poor nutrition and diet, particularly among adolescent girls and pregnant women, leading to health complications. Aurat Foundation believes that increase access to quality healthcare services, particularly for marginalized and rural communities, and enhancing reproductive health services, including family planning, and prenatal care would help in improving health conditions of women and girls. In fact, we think health and education are interconnected, as healthy girls and women are more likely to access and complete education. Investing in health and education for women and girls contributes to socio-economic development, poverty reduction, and economic growth. By addressing the intersections and synergies between health and education, we can work towards empowering women and girls, promoting their well-being, and fostering socio-economic development. Therefore, Aurat Foundation emphasizes on removing barriers to education, including poverty, cultural norms, and lack of infrastructure. AF feels that inadequate teacher training, outdated curricula, and insufficient resources hinder the quality of education. Girls and women face gender-based discrimination and biases in education, leading to lower enrollment and completion rates. These impediment need to be removed for better health and quality education for women and girls.

Access to Justice and Legal Rights

Aurat Foundation sees great significance in approaching formal systems and structures of law and justice to ensure equality of rights and status for women. Special focus is given to marginalized and disadvantaged segments in society due to the difficulties associated with being able to approach and use these structures to attain justice. This would include not just removing legal and financial barriers, but also social barriers such as language, lack of knowledge of legal rights and intimidation by the law and legal institutions. AF strives to provide knowledge as people must have information and knowledge about their rights and how to access them, and this extends to service providers as they are also required to have appropriate knowledge and expertise for the provision of effective and quality services.

Climate Justice and Green Environment

Climate Justice and Green Environment is a new priority area of Aurat Foundation. It believe in fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. We mainly focus on addressing issues such as disproportionate impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations, e.g., women, low-income communities, indigenous peoples, religious minorities, PWDs, Transgender Communities and Individuals, key populations e.g. people at risk of HIV/AIDS and elderly people.

Compliance of Human Rights Conventions

Ensuring compliance of Pakistan's international commitments remains an important area of AF interventions with Pakistan having signed and ratified a majority of important International Human Rights Conventions. AF is engaged in the follow-up, monitoring and reporting processes of these treaties, particularly in the preparation of 'shadow reports' on CEDAW. Equal emphasis is given to resolutions of UN Commission on the Status of Women and Beijing follow-up processes.

Social Mobilization of Communities

Social mobilization is the cornerstone of AF's strategy to empower communities. By organizing women at the grassroots level, AF fosters collective action to demand rights, access services, and challenge patriarchal norms. Through community-based groups, AF ensures that the voices of the most marginalized are heard in the corridors of power.