All posts by Raza Jaffri

Where women feel unsafe

Women

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE recent incident of gang-rape of a young woman in Meerwala (Muzaffargarh) on the orders of a tribal jury is a blot on the nation’s conscience. Tragically, it has many appalling dimensions and it is impossible to express the sense of outrage one feels at something so barbaric which can take place in a country that claims to be civilized.

Pakistan has never had an impressive human rights record. The state itself has emerged as the biggest violator of human dignity and civil freedoms. Society has followed suit. If a person has the ill fortune of having been born to parents from an under-privileged class or caste, he is most likely to be abused by his fellow men as well. The Meerwala case was the outcome of a caste conflict. The victim belonged to the Gujjar clan which is socially regarded to be inferior to the supposedly superior Mastoi tribe.
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Keeping an eye on schools

Economy, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

JUNE is the month for financial stocktaking in Pakistan. It is also a time when the term “human resource” — plainly put, the people — finds eloquent mention by policy makers, who all of a sudden discover the merit of an educated and trained manpower for the national economy. In this scenario a new trend has emerged of late. The government has begun to openly concede its failure in the education sector.

The Economic Survey 2001-2002 lays bare all the facts and figures pertaining to our poor performance in the field of education. This has been done very unabashedly and what better yardstick would there be than the literacy rate. In the last 11 years since 1991, the literacy rate has grown from 34.9 per cent to 50.5 per cent, so it is officially claimed.
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Message from Almaty

Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

WAS the Conference for Interaction and Confidence Measures in Asia (CICA) summit at Almaty a failure? That is how many in Pakistan feel.

If the expectation was that diplomacy on the sidelines of the summit would bring India and Pakistan rushing immediately to the negotiating table to discuss the future of Kashmir, CICA was a disappointment. But this organization which has been born after a long gestation period of a decade has achieved more than one could have hoped for in its very first high-level moot.
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Nuclear war: an insane option

Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

MAY 28 is the fourth anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests at Chaghai. On Yom-i-takbir, which the government celebrated in a big way in 1999, it informed the people through boastful newspaper ads: “We are the seventh nuclear power of the world”.

Today, as war clouds gather on the horizon, this nuclear status gives us no joy or confidence. Those in power might reassure us that nuclear weapons will not be used. But who will believe them? Can states, which possess nuclear arsenals, keep their confrontation limited to warfare with conventional weapons?
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Another world is possible

Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

A recent women’s conference in the US proved valuable for its contribution in reinforcing faith in the feminist interpretation of history, writes Zubeida Mustafa

When women from Pakistan, India and the US met in Westfield, Massachusetts recently what were they hoping to achieve? The Global Women’s History Project, which organized the meeting, is designed to give women the feminist perspective to their history.

The idea is that while their governments squabble, the women can meet unencumbered by the burdens of male-centred history and take a common female perspective of issues. Dr Elise Young, the founder of this project, is a professor of history at Westfield State College and describes her passion in life which is to bring together women on a platform of non-violence from the opposite sides of the political divide. She has already organized two such moots before bringing together women of Palestine and Israel, and from South Africa and Ireland to find common ground.
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