GBV seminar: More women cops needed, speakers agree

Dialogue to devise interventions to mitigate GBV on provincial levels

ISLAMABAD: There is a need to improve law enforcement mechanisms to make them gender-sensitive by hiring more women as police officers, psychiatrists and doctors in the police stations to deal with cases of violence against women (VAW).

This was stated at seminar on “Advocacy dialogue on Gender Based Violence: Theory and Practice” held by the South Asia Partnership Pakistan (SAP-PK) in collaboration with European Union and Khwendo Kor (KK) held on Tuesday. The dialogue was attended by all stakeholders, including prosecutors, CSOs, members of the media, parliamentarians, lawyers and judicial officials among others.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Member National Assembly (MNA) Nafeesa Khattak spoke on the ineffective law enforcement and misuse of existing laws. She said that assemblies have not remained effective due to the non-seriousness of the government and bureaucracy. “If we talk about Gender-Based Violence (GBV), the victims are unable to get justice due to the fact that the police, judge and other law enforcing agencies are politicised. We need to depoliticise institutions, especially police, and hire women police officers, psychiatrist and doctors in the police stations to deal with the issues of VAW”.

Barrister Benazir Jatoi demonstrated the lack of effective legal measures and policy instruments in addressing GBV. She said that anti-rape legislation is a welcome development in Pakistan because it provides the right to free legal representation for assault survivors.

Another anomaly that she mentioned was the contradiction on the legal age of marriage at provincial level. In Sindh, the age is 18, while in Punjab it is 16 for women.

Women rights activist Rukshanda Naz underlined the importance of the policy implementation challenges and delayed enactment of gender-related legislation. She explained that institutional biases reflected in Pakistan are deeply attached to religious extremism.

National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) Director Suleman Shah spoke of the lack of institutional mechanisms to create awareness about legal and
policy change.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2016.