All posts by Raza Jaffri

Hudood laws must go

Islamisation, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

LAST Tuesday was women’s day in the National Assembly. Four bills directly relating to them were introduced in the house. The most important of these was the one moved by the PPP (Parliamentarians) simply titled the Hudood Laws (Repeal) Bill 2005. The Hudood Ordinances, the most anti-women and anti-social of laws to be placed on the statute book in Pakistan, were never brought before the Assembly.

They were promulgated as ordinances by a military dictator and have from their inception remained anathema to most women and human rights activists in the country. Once the implications of the Zina Ordinance came to the forefront, women rallied round the Women’s Action Forum, which was created in September 1981, to fight this evil law.
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Creating hope for education

Education

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE challenge of providing education to each and every child in Pakistan is so enormous that it is difficult to be hopeful about achieving the Dakar Education Forum’s target of education for all and the millennium development goals that seek to have every child enrolled in school by the year 2015.

More disturbing is the fact that the government, whose responsibility it is to ensure universal primary education, has virtually abdicated its role.

Having contrived the concept of public-private partnership, our rulers have left it to the private sector, mainly in the form of entrepreneurs, NGOs, CBOs and civil society organizations, to fill the vacuum so created.
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Kalabagh on the backburner

Water

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

LAST week, just when the opposition’s protest had begun to reach an uncomfortably high pitch, President Pervez Musharraf decided to take the wind out of the anti-Kalabagh lobby’s sail by announcing a change in the order of dam building.

In his 90-minute wide-ranging speech, the president announced that all the five dams identified by the government would be built by 2016 but the first to be taken up would be Bhasha.

The controversial Kalabagh dam could wait — though he didn’t make it clear when it would be taken in hand. It will be completed along with the others ten years from now.
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Importance of bioethics

Health, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

ON January 21-22, the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture (Cbec) of SIUT held a joint conference with Unesco in Karachi on “bioethics education” that should provide food for thought for educationists as well as parents. When doctors speak about bioethics, we tend to conjure up images of a moral code that health professionals are supposed to observe in the practice of medicine.

The Hippocratic Oath promptly comes to mind. Hence the workshop on the first day of the conference to design a biomedical ethics curriculum for medical students seemed plausible. But was there anything to sensitize school teachers about as was the idea of the second day’s programme?
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Early learning in mother tongue

Education, Language

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

ON October 22, the federal education minister, Lt Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf, made a presentation on the “Education scenario in Pakistan” to the president and prime minister. At this meeting some key decisions were taken that were communicated by the prime minister’s secretariat to the federal education ministry for onward transmission to the provincial education departments to ensure their implementation.

These decisions, marked as “top priority”, reached various sections and departments concerned with education in Sindh on Dec 21. Some of these decisions have far-reaching significance, that is if they are actually translated into reality. Others will not have the desired impact — in fact they will have negative repercussions — because they are unscientific, unnatural and go against the basic mental development of a child.
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