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Pakistan - Status of Women

The constitution provides for equality for all citizens and broadly prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, caste, residence, or place of birth, but significant governmental and societal discrimination occurred based on each of these factors. Tribal and local traditions are relatively strong when compared to the law, creating instances where the local practice dominates the law. This means that even if there are laws to prohibit violence or certain practices, there are sometimes no effective ways to implement them.

Rape is a criminal offense, with punishment that ranges from a minimum of 10 to 25 years in prison and a fine to the death penalty. The penalty for gang rape is death or life imprisonment, but sentences, when they occurred, were often less severe. Although rape was frequent, prosecutions were rare. According to data presented by the Ministry of Interior to the senate in 2014, there had been no rape convictions in the country during previous years. Media reported at least one rape conviction in October, with the accused reportedly receiving a 12-year prison sentence. Spousal rape is not a crime.

The government did not effectively enforce the 2006 Women’s Protection Act. The act brought the crime of rape under the jurisdiction of criminal rather than Islamic courts. By law police are not allowed to arrest or hold a female victim overnight at a police station without a civil court judge’s consent. The law requires a complaint to be made directly to a sessions court, which is considered a trial court for heinous offenses. After recording the victim’s statement, the sessions court judge officially lodges a complaint, after which police may then make arrests. While this procedure was meant to eliminate police and societal abuses, NGOs reported it created other barriers for rape victims who could not afford to travel to or access the courts. Rape was a severely underreported crime.

There were no reliable national, provincial, or local statistics on rape due to underreporting and a lack of any centralized law enforcement data collection system. The Aurat Foundation reported in 2014 that 1,515 women were raped with 1,408 instances in Punjab, 85 in Sindh, five in KP, four in Balochistan, and 13 in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

According to the Aurat Foundation and others, prosecutions of reported rapes were rare. Police and NGOs reported individuals involved in other types of disputes sometimes filed false rape charges, reducing the ability of police to identify legitimate cases and proceed with prosecution. NGOs reported police were at times implicated in rape cases. NGOs also alleged police sometimes abused or threatened victims, demanding they drop charges, especially when police received bribes from suspected perpetrators or the perpetrators were influential community leaders. Some police demanded bribes from victims before registering rape charges, and investigations were sometimes superficial. While the use of post-rape medical testing increased during the year, medical personnel in many areas did not have sufficient training or equipment, which further complicated prosecutions. Accusations of rape were often resolved using extrajudicial measures, with the victim often forced to marry her attacker.

In 2010 the FSC declared several clauses of the Women’s Protection Act un-Islamic and unconstitutional. The verdict sought to reinstate certain provisions of the 1979 Hudood Ordinance and expand the FSC’s jurisdiction in cases of adultery and false accusations of adultery. Reinstatement of these provisions could permit reintroduction of adultery charges against female rape victims. In 2011 the federal government appealed the FSC’s decision to the Supreme Court, which had not set a hearing date by year’s end. In 2013 the nongovernmental Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises Parliament and the prime minister, rejected the Women’s Protection Act, saying it was contrary to the spirit of the Koran and sharia.

No specific federal law prohibits domestic violence, which was widespread. Husbands reportedly beat and occasionally killed their wives. Other forms of domestic violence included torture, physical disfigurement, and shaving the eyebrows and hair off women’s heads. In-laws abused and harassed the wives of their sons. Dowry and other family-related disputes sometimes resulted in death or disfigurement by burning or acid.

In 2014 Balochistan’s Provincial Assembly passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, which criminalizes many forms of domestic violence in addition to physical abuse, which is already covered under the penal code. The legislation made domestic violence legislation in Balochistan similar to legislation enacted by the Sindh Assembly in 2013.

Women who tried to report abuse faced serious challenges. Police and judges were sometimes reluctant to take action in domestic violence cases, viewing them as family problems. Instead of filing charges, police typically responded by encouraging the parties to reconcile. Authorities routinely returned abused women to their abusive family members.

To address societal norms that disapprove of victims who report gender-based violence and abuse, the government established women’s police stations, staffed by female officers, to offer women a safe haven where they could safely report complaints and file charges. Men were also able to use these police stations. These women’s police stations, however, struggled with understaffing and limited equipment. Training female police and changing the cultural assumptions of male police also remained challenges. Due to restrictions on women’s mobility and social pressures related to women’s appearance in public, utilization of women’s police centers was limited, but NGOs and officials reported that use was growing and more centers were needed. Many women remained unaware of the centers and more education was needed.

The government continued to operate the Crisis Center for Women in Distress, which referred abused women to NGOs for assistance. Twenty-six government-funded Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Centers for Women across the country provided legal aid, medical treatment, and psychosocial counseling. These centers served women who were victims of exploitation and violence. Victims later were referred to “Dar-ul-Amans,” or shelter houses, and funds from provincial Women Development Departments had established approximately 200 such homes for abused women and children. These provided shelter and access to medical treatment. According to NGOs the shelters did not offer other assistance to women, such as legal aid or counseling, and primarily served as halfway homes for women awaiting trial for adultery, even though they were the victims of rape and domestic abuse.

Government centers lacked sufficient space, staff, and resources. Conditions in the Dar-ul-Amans did not meet international standards. They were severely overcrowded with, in some cases, more than 35 women sharing one toilet. Few shelters offered access to basic needs such as showers, laundry supplies, or feminine hygiene products. Some shelters were given a daily food allowance of nine rupees (approximately $0.09) to feed nearly 100 women. There were some reports of women being trafficked and prostituted out of shelters. Shelter staff reportedly sometimes discriminated against women in shelters; they assumed that if women fled their homes, it was because they were women of ill repute. In some cases women were reportedly abused at the government-run shelters, found their movements severely restricted, or were pressured to return to their abusers. In November the Punjab government broke ground on a pilot Violence Against Women Center in Multan, which would provide legal, medical, psychological, and other aid, and serve as a model for other centers in the province.

At times women were victims of various types of societal violence and abuse, including honor killings, forced marriages, imposed isolation, and being used to settle tribal disputes. There were cases in which husbands and male family members treated women as chattel.

A 2004 law on honor killings and the 2011 Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act criminalize acts committed against women in the name of traditional practices. Despite these laws hundreds of women reportedly were victims of honor killings. Many cases went unreported and unpunished. The practice of “karo-kari” or “siyah kari”--a premeditated honor killing that occurs if a family, community, tribal court, or jirga determines that adultery or some other “crime of honor” occurred--continued across the country. Karo-kari derives from “black male” (karo) and “black female” (kari), metaphoric terms for someone who has dishonored the family or is an adulterer or adulteress. In many cases the male involved in the alleged “crime of honor” is not killed but allowed to flee.

Human rights groups criticized the federal law banning so-called honor killings because it allows the victim or the victim’s heirs to negotiate physical or monetary restitution with the perpetrator in exchange for dropping charges. NGO leaders commented that in many instances a member of the victim’s family, such as a father or brother, carried out the honor killing, and the new guardian or heir was a brother or cousin, which meant the negotiation was often moot.

Police in Sindh established karo-kari cells with a free telephone number in the districts of Sukkur, Ghotki, Khairpur, and Nausharo Feroze for persons to report karo-kari incidents. Because honor crimes generally occurred within families, many went unreported. Police and NGOs reported that increased media coverage enabled law enforcement officials to take some action against a limited number of perpetrators. In February media reported that a brother killed his sister in an alleged karo-kari case, and, while a case was registered with police, they were unable to arrest the accused. In April police arrested Muhammad Siddique and his father after they set the son’s wife, Shabana Bibi, on fire for leaving the house without asking permission.

The practice of cutting off a woman’s nose or ears, especially in connection with honor crimes, was frequently reported, but authorities often did not take action to combat the practice.

Although prohibited by law, the practice of buying and selling brides also continued in rural areas. Many tribes, communities, or families practiced sequestering women from all contact with men other than their relatives. Despite prohibitions on handing over women as compensation for crimes or as a resolution of a dispute (also known as “vani” or “swara”), the practice continued in Punjab and KP. In rural Sindh landowning families continued the practice of “marriage to the Koran,” forcing a female family member to stay unmarried to avoid division of property. Property of women married to the Koran remained under the legal control of their fathers or eldest brothers, and such women were prohibited from contact with any man older than age 14. Families expected these women to stay in the home and not contact anyone outside their families.

The 2011 Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Amendment Act criminalizes and punishes giving a woman in marriage to settle a civil or criminal dispute; depriving a woman of her rights to inherit movable or immovable property by deceitful or illegal means; coercing or in any manner compelling a woman to enter into marriage; and compelling, arranging, or facilitating the marriage of a woman with the Koran, including forcing her to take an oath on the Koran to remain unmarried or not to claim her share of an inheritance.

The 2010 Acid Control and Acid Crime Practice Bill makes maiming or killing via corrosive substance a crime and imposes stiff penalties against perpetrators. As with other laws, these measures are not applicable to FATA and PATA unless the president issues a notification to that effect. Nevertheless, there were numerous acid attacks on women across the country, with few perpetrators bought to justice. According to a panel organized by the HRCP in October, more than 98 percent of registered acid-attack cases remained unresolved. The HRCP alleged that authorities registered 150 to 400 cases of acid attacks each year. In May, two women suffered burn injuries when a man, in a case of personal enmity, threw acid on them as they walked home. Police arrested the attacker.

The 2012 National Commission on the Status of Women Bill provides for the commission’s financial and administrative autonomy to investigate violations of women’s rights. According to women’s rights activists, however, the commission lacked resources and remained powerless.

Although the 2010 Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Protection Against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act criminalize sexual harassment in the workplace and public sphere, the problem was widespread. The law requires all provinces to establish provincial-level ombudsmen. Sindh was the first province to do so, in 2012. Punjab Province and administrative district Gilgit-Baltistan also established ombudsmen. Neither Balochistan nor KP had an ombudsman. Press reports indicated harassment was especially high among domestic workers and nurses. A press report indicated that the social media also targeted young female doctors for harassment.

Tribal elders in Pakistan were arrested for ordering the brutal murder of a 16-year-old girl who helped a couple elope. The girl was bound and burned to death in the vehicle used for the escape. The murder happened May 2016 in the town of Donga Gali, about 50km northeast of the capital, Islamabad. The so-called honor killing was ordered by the elders as punishment after the victim helped a couple from the nearby village of Makol. The couple violated cultural norms when they ran off together, and the elders saw the 16-year-old's participation in the act as causing irreparable damage to the village's reputation. The elders “took her to an abandoned place outside the village and made her unconscious by injecting her with some drugs," said district police chief Saeed Wazir. "Then they seated the girl in a van in which the couple had escaped. They tied her hands to the seats and then poured petrol on her and the vehicle."

Qandeel Baloch was a young woman in the South Asian country who rose to fame on social media after being featured in a 2014 video that went viral. In it, she asked a man, "How am I looking?" The social media star, who was in her 20s, called herself the Pakistani Kim Kardashian, a modern feminist. Her real name was Fauzia Azeem. Her outspoken views and sexually suggestive videos posted online provoked controversy in an Islamic state that is not comfortable with Western feminism – something that earned Baloch praise from many young people and condemnation from the more traditional elements of society.

Muhammad Waseem, Baloch’s brother, killed her on 15 July 2016 while the family was visiting the central Punjab village of Muzzafarabad for the recent Eid holiday. He confessed the next day, saying at a news conference that he’d given his sister a “tablet” to subdue her and then strangled her. Waseem said he had no regrets and did it to preserve the family’s honor.

A Pakistani man killed his two sisters the evening before their weddings because they had chosen their own husbands, rather than settling for arranged marriages. Nazir Hussain, 35, from Pakistan's central Punjab province, shot dead his two sisters on 29 July 2016. The two victims, 22-year-old Kosar Bibi and 28-year-old Gulzar Bibi, were set to get married the next day. “The brother shot dead both the sisters yesterday and fled the site,” police officer Mehar Riaz told AFP. “It is a simple case of killing for honor.” Hussain had objected to the nuptials, wanting the women to marry within the extended family rather than choose their own spouses, Riaz said. The father of the family, Atta Mohammed, said his son had “ruined my family, he destroyed us, he destroyed everything,” the Express Tribune reported.

Pakistan’s parliament on 06 October 2016 tightened a legal loophole that allowed perpetrators of honor killings to avoid justice. Under the new law, a pardon granted by the victim’s family can spare the convicted perpetrator from capital punishment – but not from a mandated minimum sentence of life in prison.