Islamabad cop gets rights award

ISLAMABAD: An officer of the Islamabad Police has been awarded the Human Rights Professional Medal by an Islamabad-based non-governmental rights observer organisation.

In a ceremony held in connection with the International Human Rights Day in Islamabad, the United Nations Information Centre Director Vittorio Cammarota presented the medal to SP Jameel Hashmi.

Hashmi, who is currently posted at the Diplomatic Protection Department of the Islamabad Police, had also served as UN human rights officer in Bosnia in 1996, after the Bosnian war.

In 2011, the UN had awarded woman police officer DSP Shahzadi Gulfam International Female Police Peacekeeper Award for her performance as part of the UN peacekeeping operations.

Gulfam had been deployed with the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) as the UN Police (UNPOL) team leader at the Timor-Leste National Police Vulnerable Persons Unit in Dili, the capital.

Gulfam was selected for the award by the United Nations Police Division in the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the International Association of Women Police (IAWP) International Scholarship Committee.She joined the Punjab police in March 1985.

During her career, she performed equally well at the national and international level, according to an UNPOL press release. She was the first Pakistani woman to be deployed with the UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997 and subsequently served in UN missions in Kosovo in 1999 and Timor-Leste in 2007.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2016.