Legislating against acid attacks

The need to control import, production, sale and use of acid to prevent its misuse needs to be emphasised.

The government has announced it will move the long awaited Acid Control and Burn Crime Prevention Bill in the National Assembly during this current month. While effective implementation remains a major challenge, passage of the law itself will certainly be a step in the right direction.

Throwing acid on someone is an absolutely heinous act. Depending on the amount of acid used, the attack may be fatal or may leave the victim badly burnt and disfigured for life. For those with access to medical care and plastic surgery, disfigurement and other complications may be reduced, but severe physical and mental scars often continue to haunt acid attack victims for the rest of their lives.

Acid attacks take place frequently not only in our part of the world, but also in South America and Africa. Girls have had acid thrown on them for going to school in Afghanistan. Women are attacked for turning down marriage proposals, or bringing inadequate dowries. Many acid attack sufferers are in fact victims of ‘collateral damage’, since acid was spilt on them when they came in the way of an attacker and the intended target.

The actual number of such crimes in Pakistan is thought to be underreported because many victims do not come forward out of fear of further torture by their perpetrators, or because their families agree to out-of-court settlements. Police action against such crimes is usually rare and conviction of the culprit even more so.

The easy availability of acid is another problem. Highly concentrated hydrochloric or sulphuric acid is readily purchasable in Pakistan. It is commonly used to clean toilets in homes in urban areas and the rural populace uses it to clean residue from cotton seeds before sowing them.

To tackle all these issues, the Bill sets forth an ambitious agenda. It is the result of hard work and coordination between NGOs like the Acid Survivors Foundation, the National Commission on Status of Women, United Nations Development Fund for Women, and the ministry of women development. These efforts have enabled identifying several relevant provisions such as specifically criminalising acid-related violence by providing tougher and stricter penalties, and recommending speedy trial of such heinous offences. The need to control the import, production, transportation, hoarding, sale and use of acid to prevent its misuse has been emphasised. Medical professionals are meant to be legally bound to report acid-related injuries to police to facilitate prosecution. Furthermore, the bill aims to entitle victims to government benefits, and provide for their treatment, rehabilitation, and legal aid.

Legislation itself does not translate into changing ground realities. It clearly needs to be followed up with sufficient resource commitment and implementation resolve. But a comprehensive legislation framework was vital to help provide a tangible context for implementing acid attack prosecution and preventive measures, which did not really exist in Pakistan’s case until this specific bill was formulated.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2010.