Media can help play a role, highlighting cases where the law is not implemented despite passage of the legislation.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: After a hard struggle of three years wherein it faced stiff resistance from various members of parliament, the National Assembly on November 15 finally passed a bill seeking to outlaw many practices in Pakistan deemed discriminatory to women.
Once approved by the upper house and signed by the president, the bill become law. It will impose fines and various jail terms on those who indulge in practices such as ‘vani’ and ‘swara’ wherein a young girl is forcibly married to the member of a different clan or tribe in order to resolve a feud.
It will also criminalise the so-called marriage to the Holy Quran, wherein a girl is forced to take an oath on the Holy Quran to remain unmarried for the rest of her life. This is a rather convenient way of ensuring that her share in family property and inheritance remains within the family. In addition to this, those who indulge in forced marriages or adopt deceitful or illegal means to deprive a woman from her share in family property/ inheritance will face jail terms and hefty fines. Hence, the passage of the legislation is most welcome and much needed in fact since it targets many traditional practices which treat girls and women as property or items for sale.
Now, however, starts the most difficult part of the struggle. And this is changing the medieval mindset which is the primary factor why such abominable customs have been practiced for the past several centuries.
At the very least, fear of imprisonment and hefty fines may help to improve the situation, but only to a certain extent. What will be crucial is the role of the police and the courts because that will determine how the law is implemented. Here, the situation on the ground is not particularly encouraging since the police, especially in the countryside, are often under the control of the local influential or landlord and usually don’t do anything without his approval.
In this, the media can help play a role. It can highlight cases where the law is not being implemented despite the passage of the legislation so that pressure is brought to bear on the police and the judicial system to do its job in safeguarding the rights of women and treating them equally under law and enshrined in the Constitution.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, November 20th, 2011.
