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.
Continue reading Women’s viewBy Zubeida Mustafa
OUR society seems to have been obsessed for long with the idea of matrimony. Mercifully, the growing trend towards female education has to an extent weakened this obsession — but not in communities still deprived of the benefits of education and enlightenment.
In these underprivileged classes, which constitute the majority, it is a common practice for mothers to start planning their child’s marriage soon after birth. They informally decide who will be whose life partner. Termed ‘baat pukki karna’, the arrangement is irrevocable. The girl’s mother even starts collecting her daughter’s jahez. Obscurantist parents even consider it a sin if the child is not married before puberty.
Continue reading Child marriagesBy Zubeida Mustafa
THE current issue of the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association carries a supplement sponsored by Pathfinder and titled ‘Keeping the FP promise alive’. This will no doubt be a formidable challenge. A look at the family planning data contained in the supplement gives rise to a sense of hopelessness about the promise ever being kept. In 2012, Pakistan had promised at the family planning conference in London to double the contraceptive prevalence rate to 55 per cent by 2020.We are nowhere close to it.
Continue reading Broken promisesBy 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 With the countervailing force of the socialist bloc withdrawn and respectability granted to elitism and the exercise of unabashed corporate power, inequality became rampant.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.
Continue reading Unequal and illBy Zubeida Mustafa
TWITTER has emerged as the new platform for announcing public policies to ensure maximum publicity. But a tweet without action on the ground has no credibility. Hence, Minister of Planning Asad Umar’s recent tweet calling for Pakistan to prioritise population growth reduction will raise expectations of plausible official measures.
Continue reading We and they