A committee has been formed to probe the matter, a move opposed by one of the province’s senior minister who recommended that ‘women should not attend co-education institutes’ in order to shield themselves from harassment. He lauded the fact that former Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal government had catered to separate medical colleges for men and women.
Sexual harassment of female university students is more than unfortunate, but I am short of words over the minister’s unsettling recommendation, which can simply not be condemned enough. However, thankfully, a senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and many lawmakers from the Pakistan Peoples Party favoured the measure of probing harassment on the assembly floor and now the committee is ready to investigate the matter.
It must be understood that reporting harassment is a very brave step by the victim. Owing to substantial gray areas, there is often a lot of ambiguity on what boils down to harassment and what doesn’t. In this way, harassment, as a crime, is more challenging to deal with than rape. But in cases of both rape and harassment, victims are usually leery about raising a voice, which strengthens the perpetrators’ evil resolves. Needless to say, there is a dire need to facilitate victim, to provide them backing and to cater to a platform where they can respectable register their complaints.
Moreover, the harassment of female students has two-pronged consequences. It not only debilitates a student mentally, but also hinders his/her academic performance. Students become poor at academics not because of a lack of talent, but because of the evil designs of those who like to abuse their power.
The most important thing behind cases of harassment could be the fact that teachers and male staffers who harass students have political affiliations which is why they fear no one. This state of affairs can only be negated by giving victims an equally strong backing. There should be a committee in each and every university, comprising also of students’ parents, to take care of such complaints and those involved should be dealt with accordingly.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2014.
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Thank you Riaz Ahmad for writing a very positive article. Actually after the laws against sexual harassment were passed in March of 2010, Peshawar University was one of the first universities to comply with it. I remember a few cases were reported and handled in a very responsible manner. This was in the days of Dr. Sara Safdar who had taken concrete steps to make the environment in the university more dignified. She was planning on having all the departments appoint Standing Inquiry Committees as prescribed in the law before she retired. We are still very hopeful that the University management will take up the work where she had left it off. I was a student of this university a long time ago and always took pride on how the environment of our university was so much better than that of other universities in the country.
I am working on the implementation of anti-sexual harassment legislation and am willing to work with the management on effective implementation of these laws. We can help set up the mechanism given in the law and also train the Inquiry Committee members so that they can properly conduct inquiry of these cases, even in the absence of evidence and witnesses. Please let me know how I can help. This is one of the best universities in the country and needs to stay that way to educate our future generations.