Category Archives: Justice

‘Baji, let it be’

December 16, 2022Children and Youth, Human Rights, Justice, Law & Order, WomenZubeida Mustafa

By Zubeida Mustafa

PAKISTAN is regressing; the extent of its decline can be measured by the treatment meted out to its women. What happened at Mujahid Colony in Karachi not too long ago has set new standards of ‘beastliness’ on the part of state functionaries in subduing women. The confrontation between women and the police took place when the authorities, having decided to widen a road in North Nazimabad, sent demolition teams to clear so-called encroachments. I will not go into the legalities of the issue as controversy surrounds it.

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Society stratified

November 18, 2022Children and Youth, Education, Justice, Social IssuesZubeida Mustafa

By Zubeida Mustafa

UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, launched recently, points to a basic flaw in the education systems of South Asia. It is the inequity that the fast-growing private sector in education has spawned. The GEM report does not say it in so many words but the fact is that inequity is stratifying society itself.

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Women’s view

January 15, 2022Justice, WomenZubeida Mustafa

By Zubeida Mustafa

WE have welcome news on the women’s front. A female judge is expected to break fresh ground. Justice Ayesha Malik, a judge of the Lahore High Court, has been nominated by the Judicial Commission of Pakistan for elevation to the Supreme Court. Her appointment will be formally announced following approval by a bipartisan parliamentary committee.

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Unequal and ill

October 9, 2021General, Health, Justice, Mental health, Social Issues, WomenZubeida Mustafa

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE world could not have been more unequal in contemporary history than what it is today. It has always been unequal but the present trend set in when the Cold War ended with the fall of the USSR giving neoliberal forces a free rein. With the countervailing force of the socialist bloc withdrawn and respectability granted to elitism and the exercise of unabashed corporate power, inequality became rampant. Not that inequities did not exist before. But today, inequality and its discontents are unparalleled.

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What a fall

August 27, 2021Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, General, Justice, Social IssuesZubeida Mustafa

By Zubeida Mustafa

ASER sheds light on how the Covid-19 pandemic and the intermittent lockdowns have impacted severely on education in Pakistan. It confirms what the Federal Ministry of Education had conceded last year. The crisis has “magnified the risks and vulnerabilities of an already weak education system”.

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