By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
EARLY this year, education in Pakistan appeared to be on the verge of experiencing a change of a positive kind . But this may not happen now. Those who control power are actively opposed to reforms though they will never acknowledge it publicly. Hence they go through elaborate motions of bringing about a change without actually changing anything.
Continue reading Killing education reforms
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
MARCH 8 is International Women’s Day. It should not be made into a day of lamentation decrying the plight of women in Pakistan. No doubt it saddens one’s heart to see the honour killings, the rapes and the domestic violence that women suffer.
Then there is the prevalent gender bias in society combined with the fact that unequal opportunities marginalise women. It makes one ask, how far do we still have to go?
Continue reading Revisiting women’s movement
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
FOR three days last week, forty or so women writers from five South Asian countries along with four others from America, Russia and Peru interacted with one another in a colloquium to discuss what the organisers termed the power of the word.
Hosted by the Indian chapter of the Women’s World International in New Delhi, the meeting was designed to take up the problems women writers encounter in the course of their work. Why the need for such a moot? Jeelani Bano, the Urdu fiction writer from Hyderabad, India, posed the rhetorical question, “Why do we not ever hear of a men’s conference to discuss an issue pertaining to men only?”
Continue reading The power of the word
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
ASGHAR Ali Engineer, a well-known social scientist and activist who heads the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, has studied the dynamics of many communal riots in India. His observation based on personal first hand knowledge is that most incidents of violence have an underlying economic cause. There are vested interests at work trying to change the situation in such a way that they profit from it.
Continue reading Profiting from the status quo
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
THE preamble to Unesco’s constitution contains these words of profound wisdom: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” The founding fathers of this organisation recognised the role of education, science and culture in promoting peace and harmony.
Yet the world has so far failed to reach these elusive goals. But is it too late to try to build the peace structures that statesmen of yore dreamed of 60 years ago?
The answer to this question came last Saturday when the Human Rights Education Programme, an NGO working for what its name unambiguously spells out, held the ground-breaking ceremony for the Children’s Museum for Peace and Human Rights (CMPHR) that it had been dreaming of for five years. Designed to provide space for children to get together and interact, the museum will be based on the precept that “education must be life-long and socially relevant”, to quote Zulfiqar Ali, the director of the HREP and general secretary of the museum.
Continue reading Building defences for peace