`Chief Minister Sindh, Murad Ali Shah … said: `This is a metropolitan city, not a tribal area where jirgas are held. I would not allow such kind of barbarianism here [sic]`.

Hajrah Mumtaz

They belonged originally to the Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A few weeks earlier, on Sept 12, also in Karachi, it was reported that the bodies of a young couple would be exhumed for postmortem examination. The investigation found that the pair had indeed been murdered, most probably by their families; apparently they had been tortured and then electrocuted. The reason, again, was that they had had the temerity to decide their own marriage choices, and had therefore invited the ire of their community.

Again, the bodies were silently buried the police only came to know of the case as a result of an informer; a case was then filed on behalf of the state. Here too, the young woman and man were of Pakhtun ethnicity, the murders ordered by a jirga.

Scores of such cases come to light every year, the problem of `honour` killing not seeming to abate despite the state having passed legislation regarding various such and related crimes in this context including swara the practice of giving a woman as a `gift` to an aggrieved family or tribe to settle a dispute, thereby condemning her to a truly hellish future forced marriage and jirga decisions.

While on the subject of legislation, the state is not innocent of ambivalence either: while well-meaning legislation has been passed, it is also a reality that the state has at various times bowed before its own inability to mend a broken formal justice system.

Most recently, for example, the National AssemblypassedinFebruarytheAlternate Dispute Resolution Bill, 2016, which would allow informal but traditional `courts` to settle 23 types of civil and criminal disputes. And for the record or irony it was in October 2016 that a joint session of parliament unanimously approved antihonour killing and rape bills moved byPPP senator Farhatullah Baber, making punishment for those proved guilty tougher than `ordinary` murder cases.

To get back to the point, though, the reality is that in the attempt to change mindsets and centuries-old customs, heinous though they are let us accept `honour` killings as that more is needed than just legislation, or even implementation, absolutely vital as these are. The two crimes recounted above concern the Pakhtun community; but regardless of the Sindh chief minister`s outrage that this occurred in the metropolitan city of Karachi by many estimates the largest Pakhtun city in the world the f act is that this dire reality cannot be pinned on any one or two ethnicities alone.

Sindh has been notorious for such killings, to the extent that several years ago, `free-will` couples started putting in advertisements in Sindhi-language newspapers in connection with their predicament.

Today, they are common: a young womanputs on public record that she has married someone because she wanted to, so that if something happens to her or her husband, the blame can be squarely implic ate d.

It has been argued, with reasonable merit, that what the statistics renect is perhaps not so much in the rise of`honour` crimes but the fact that they are more likely to be reported in recent years partly as a result of increased awareness about legislation on the subject and perhaps even, in some quarters, a modernising mindset of some sections the population (if one can take the liberty of saying that given recent events on the political stage).

And yet, against that is the fact that a young woman was recently telling me about several of her female cousins` elopements, girls that lived outside of urban areas. The reason, she said, was that they weren`t able to stand up to patriarchy when it presented them with an arranged marriage. Some of them, I was told, were hunted down. The others were ostracised.

In the case of one cousin, swara was suggested as a way out by the groom`s family, but the family/jirga jury was out on that.

Perhaps, at this stage, it can only be concluded that it will be a long while before our society catches up to modernity. The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

At the age of around three, the daughter of a domestic worker in Karachi started to inexplicably lose weight. After months of ignoring the issue, the mother finally approached her employer, whose first question was whether the child got enough to eat and if her diet was a balanced one.

Hajrah Mumtaz

Upon being taken to a doctor, it was revealed that the child was suffering from various deficiencies, including vitamin and iodine. The medic also explained that the girl was probably a victim of intergenerational malnutrition given that this was the case with the bulk of the poor in the country. The vitamin deficiencies could be compensated for, he said, but the adverse effects of malnutrition that had already impacted the child in utero and in the crucial first two years of her life — physical stunting, slower cognitive development etc — were permanent.

Over 9m Pakistani children experience chronic malnutrition.

This country’s shocking figures on malnutrition and high rates of stunting have been in the headlines for several years now. Even so, there seems to be little understanding of the problem and the scale at which it is putting successive generations at a significant disadvantage.

Intergenerational malnutrition occurs when the effects of chronic malnutrition play out over successive generations: undernourished girls become undernourished mothers whose children are therefore also undernourished, both during pregnancy and later because of poverty. Of these, the girls — already born and raised weaker than their potential — will go on to become malnourished mothers. The effects are compounded and aggregate.

On top of this is not just the discrimination girls face food-wise at the hands of the male members of the family (‘the boys need it more’ logic), but also the fact that many girls are married off far too early and have little say in when they should bear children.

According to the World Food Programme, globally malnourished mothers give birth to somewhere around 17 million underweight infants every year. Of these, the ones that survive infancy face compromised health and cognitive development all through their lives. The same source says that at a worldwide level, maternal malnutrition accounts for 20 per cent of child stunting. Referring specifically to Pakistan, the National Nutrition Survey 2011 tells us that 44pc of children in the country suffer stunted growth — according to the UN the third highest number in the world.

This translates into 9.6m Pakistani children that have experienced chronic nutritional deprivation in utero or during early childhood. Stunting and slow cognitive development translate to persons less able to work to their full potential later in life, thus deepening the poverty cycle. The effects of in utero malnutrition can be compensated for to some extent in early life, but after age two or so, by when some 80pc of the brain’s capacity has already developed, the deficiencies have become permanent.

If this presents a frightening lens through which to view the predicament in which millions of Pakistan’s poor find themselves, consider an old bit of research on poverty of which I was recently reminded. In 2013, the prestigious Science magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science carried a ground-breaking lens through which to study financial stress.

It showed that poverty, in and of itself, significantly hurts people’s ability to make well-thought-out decisions and, as a single factor, imposes a mental burden comparable to losing a dozen IQ points.

In other words, the stress of it is such that people’s ability and judgement to decide wisely is significantly impeded, because the short-term gains are so urgently needed and long-term ones seem so impossible. Poverty, as the article notes, directly impedes cognitive function. One of the authors of the study, Eldar Shafir, commented in an interview back then that “All the data suggests it is not the person, it’s the context they are inhabiting”.

Put these pieces of research together and the future looks grim indeed: on the one hand, there are millions labouring on despite poor cognitive development; on the other, the very context of poverty could be leading to poor decision-making. Hence, perhaps, the very slow pace of success in Pakistan’s intervention initiatives — and there have been several over the decades — to lift millions out of poverty and improve lives.

The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2017

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

On Thursday, Pakistan finally managed a step that ought to go some distance towards discouraging and punishing two of the most heinous crimes that are committed against the beleaguered women of this land. The Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Amendment Bill) 2015 and Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Amendment Bill) 2015, originally piloted by PPP legislator Sughra Imam, had been left hanging for months. Passed by the Senate in March 2015, they lapsed because they were not taken up by National Assembly; the only way to secure their passage into law had been through a joint sitting of parliament.

Hajrah Mumtaz

Why create problems where none exist?

These are important gains. One would have expected that there would be consensus and congratulations all around, along with the resolve for the government to metaphorically roll up its sleeves and get to work. But Pakistan wouldn’t be the country it is if there weren’t sour faces and objections on the flimsiest of grounds, undermining otherwise positive optics.

On Thursday, these came from Jamshed Dasti, who lamented time spent on these bills and pointed out that the session had been called to discuss the matter of Kashmir. In his view, the latter issue had been overshadowed and “there [had been] no point in bringing up this bill today”. Instead, he felt, the occasion should have been used to “send a message to our enemy”.

It seems to have escaped the respected lawmaker’s attention that these two crimes, considering the frequency with which they are committed in this country, as well as the mindset they represent, can be termed a war against half the population. In choosing to say what he did, he broadcast the unfortunate signal that, notwithstanding progressive laws, attitudes remain deeply retrogressive.

He cemented this conclusion by bizarrely lamenting that “today, even fifth-graders are aware of sex education” — this, in a country that has seen a child sexual abuse scandal at the scale of the one in Kasur some time ago, and where even otherwise sexual abuse is rampant.

If this is an example of retrogressive attitudes and needlessly creating issues where none need exist, consider another example. The same day as the joint sitting of parliament was wasting its time on a couple of landmark pieces of legislation, it was reported that MPA Khurram Sher Zaman of Karachi’s upmarket Clifton constituency had on Sept 21 written to the Sindh minister for education and literacy. The grave issue he wanted to bring to attention was that, according to his information, dance classes were being made part of the curriculum in private schools.

Leave aside the irony that the offended sensibilities were those of a lawmaker belonging to the PTI, a party characterised by song and dance at its rallies, the fact is, as activists have pointed out, one would be hard-pressed to find any school at all where dance is part of the curriculum.

The immediate outcome of the contents of this letter becoming public was that the head of the Sindh education department’s curriculum wing had to go on record saying that music and dance were not part of the national curriculum; and the head of the Private School Management Association also stated that the national curriculum does not allow the teaching of dance. Meanwhile, those interested in teaching or learning dance were left saying ‘Where? Where?’

In the absence of any information about specific institutions where this nefarious activity is allegedly taking place, we can only speculate about what so moved Mr Zaman that he had to bring it to the attention of a minister who must already struggle to fulfil his responsibilities given the state of shambles the education sector is in. This much is known, though: most schools, public or private, organise from time to time tableaus and talent shows as part of their extracurricular activities. Are these what the lawmaker is objecting to? Regardless, while it has been confirmed that dance is not part of the national curriculum, the basis has been laid for the creation, one day, of a rule specifically outlawing it.

There is no dearth in Pakistan of very serious issues that need urgent addressing. One could have hoped that it would be these that primarily exercise the faculties of those elected to do something about them. But it seems that is not to be, apparently no occasion remaining entirely shorn of mischief-making by some quarter or the other (the examples are myriad). If that were not the case, perhaps Pakistan would not be what it is.

The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
Published in Dawn October 10th, 2016

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The availability of cheap labour and low levels of educational/ economic opportunity, to say nothing of the insufficiency of jobs and the surfeit of both poverty and people, make it one of Pakistan’s unsurprising realities that any household that can afford to employ domestic staff does so. ‘Afford’ is a relative term — those who live in posh mansions might require a small army to keep the place in order; their more modestly placed middle-income compatriots also generally have the luxury of employing someone to help out.

Hajrah Mumtaz

Further, the issue receives little attention — when compared to the gross inequities faced by labour in, say, the industrial or agricultural sectors — because the bulk of these work relations occur behind closed doors, in the privacy of the home.

Even so, tales of exploitation and abuse occasionally filter out. And they are harrowing, in most cases having come under the glare of public attention only when the most appalling of crimes has been committed. A maid makes it to the headlines only when she has died or has been assaulted, or has suffered some act of extreme violence that calls for the services of either a hospital or the police. The less horrifying stories never make it to the public domain, and the exploitation continues across the board — there in plain sight, rarely remarked upon.

Naming and shaming domestic help on social media is a favourite pastime.

Restricting this argument to those employed in the domestic sphere, the ways in which exploitation occurs are myriad. Apart from extreme transgressions against rights as outlined here, there is routine abuse such as salaries below the minimum wage mandated by the state, denial of off-time or weekly holidays, unfair working conditions or emotional abuse — consider those who are subjected to verbal violence or indignities, or a child who has nothing cleaning up after one who has everything.

The ways in which the rights of the powerless can be abused is endless, and in urban Pakistan, amongst some of the relatively well-off, the internet and the social media seem to have provided a new method. On the surface, the idea seems well intentioned; scratch it even slightly though and the problems become immediately evident.

In Karachi, I came upon a forum several months ago after running a web search based on an overheard conversation. One woman mentioned that she was considering hiring a new maid, but the references provided by the young woman in question did not seem to add up. She should, said the others, post the prospective employee’s picture and details up on the forum which has members from across the city, and if anyone had employed this person before or knew her, they’d be able to help.

Intrigued, I started following this group, and have found other similar forums on the web and on smartphone platforms. The idea could have been for people to be able to share information about domestic workers or potential employees — who is efficient, who might know a part-time cook, who is letting their driver go and would like to find him a new post.

Problematically, though, the reverse is being put up: pictures, names and in some cases, photographs of the identity cards of domestic workers with whom group members say they have had a bad experience: this girl stole from me, that one lies, this man is unreliable — don’t hire them.

This takes inequality and the denial of rights to another level altogether, with a pool of prospective employers sharing amongst themselves information that may or may not be true, that the potential employees have no way of being privy to. Most importantly, it constitutes a sentencing without trial where the person accused of misdemeanour has no chance of defending themselves.

The group I joined has over 600 members in Karachi, a small number for a city of millions. Yet it is not insignificant either, for a scroll through the members’ details provides a good sampling of the wealthier sections of society in this city. And, obviously, there are countless groups and platforms that can be used.

What Pakistan needs reminding, then, is that the issue of domestic labour and the ways in which too many can be and are exploited needs to be brought out into the open. This is a sector that accounts for the livelihood of millions across the country; surely, improvement in their lot must be lobbied for, just as it is for daily-wage or industrial or agricultural workers.

The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2016

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

That Pakistan is a hostile terrain for women is widely known. The vast majority of the poor have little choice but to carry on with life as best as they can, holding out in the hope that the state and its set of laws, law enforcement and justice systems will be able to protect their freedoms and dignity.

(And to be fair, Pakistan has over the years made sporadic but significant progress in this regard; in several areas, lawmakers` and the authorities` oft-claimed commitment to women`s rights has translated into concrete action, even if ugly ground realities will take time to change.) For the well-off women of the country, though, at least the niggling, everyday problems that are linked to being in Pakistan and being female are somewhat more easily solved. So it was that when an upscale mall in Karachi started getting complaints that female drivers were being unable to find parking spots, because they were overwhelmingly taken up by male drivers, it was prompt to respond.

Now, some two dozen parking spots located near one of the entrances of the mall are reserved for female drivers. Amongst the more privileged sections of the citizenry, this has produced a general sense of relief.

This is because `being unable to find a parking spot` is a sort of euphemism for a greater, much more endemic problem that every single female in the country, rich or poor, young or old, experiences but is little talked about due to its `everyday` nature because it has, in Pakistan as in most other countries, been `normalised.

The problem was not that there weren`t enough parking spaces in this mall, which has a massive parking lot; the problem was that when the place was crowded, parking spots could only be found further and further away from the entrances a risky business for women who fear being subjected to, at worst, some sort of violence in that long walk through echoing tunnels with silent, dark cars, and at best, the same walk past endless rows of men guards, drivers, parking attendants, cleaning and other staff all of whom the women see as harassing and intimidating with their eyes and language.

(Again, this sort of risk is by no means a Pakistani problem.) No wonder, then, that the move has been widely met with relief. Such gender segregation in public spaces is common around the world. Where Pakistan has its women-only sections in buses and mini-vans, so do India, Brazil, Russia and Japan. Recently, a German train operator introduced women only carriages, citing not sexual harassment but request for more privacy but that again appears the same sort of euphemisms insufficient parking spaces.

The idea has been floated even in the UK a survey of levels of sexual harassment and unwanted sexual behaviour on the Tube produced the shocking figure of one out of seven women experiencing it.

Gender segregation can be a good idea in the short term, and can indeed prove useful in protecting individual women, but it is deeply problematic in the long term and on the societal level. If women have to be shut away from men to keep them safe, where does it end? At the far end of that road lies a system of laws and restrictions on basic freedoms such as those that prevail in Saudi Arabia. And, further, from the male perspective, I would find the idea very offensive, underpinned as it is by the construction of the masculine as some sort of wild, visceral, uncontrollable being that cannot really be taught to behave.

Gender segregation works to further cement the `otherness` of women, their relegation to the margins where they exist as shadows, simultaneously the sufferers of violence and held by society to be responsible for its perpetration. To lower levels of violence against women, physical, psychological and emotional, what states need to do is teach men to lower their gaze and watch their hands. And the means to that is law enforcement.

Transport for London, for example, launched Project Guardian to eliminate unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport, which last year released the hard-hitting `Report It to Stop It` advertisement campaign. Look it up on YouTube; it is powerful, showing as it does the sliding scale going from the vague suspicion of being harassed to indisputable knowledge and helplessness. India ran a similarly powerful public interest ad campaign, carrying the face of Madhuri Dixit, against violence against women.

In terms of Pakistan, then, encouraging signs can be read into increasing levels of women reporting the transgressions of their rights. The poor must wait for the law and its apparatus to reach out to them. But the well-off women of the country can afford to resist measures that end in further marginalisation of their gender, and use their positions of power to lobby for long-term change.

The writer is a member of staff. hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan