A Women`s Jirga

When interviewed by Reuters, Zardad Khan, from the village of Makol to which 16-year-old Ambreen belonged, said, `This barbarity has never happened before.` The teenager was killed, her body put in a van and burned.

Decolonising Education

The University of Cape Town in South Africa, perched on the bottom of the world, is a well-known and highly respected institution in both that country and the world at large. On March 9 last year, a blacl< student named Chumani Maxwele, studying on a scholarship at the elite school, did something bizarre. Maxwele lives in a Khayelitsha, a black township in Cape Town so crammed with people that most of its plastic and cardboard shacks are barely large enough for a person to stand. There is no sanitation; people defecate in plastic boxes that are left on the kerb. On that March morning, Maxwele took one of these plastic boxes. When he reached the university, he took the box and hurled its contents at a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a famous British colonialist.

Hopes and `Honour` Killings

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently watched A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Sharmeen Obald Chinoy`s Oscar-nominated documentary about `honour` killings. In a statement following the screening, he told Ms Chinoy and his audience that there is no `honour` in murder.