Blue Veins, a non-for-profit organisation has conducted research on women access to justice and effectiveness of pro-women legislations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Blue Veins under Gender Equity Programme organized a district level seminar for sharing the key findings of the research with the stakeholders here the other day.
The organisation is implementing the project "Strengthening District Bar Associations and setting up Facilitation Kiosks in District Court" Peshawar in collaboration with District Bar Association under Gender Equity Programme (GEP) of Aurat Foundation supported by USAID.
The project has completed its four quarters successfully and has entered its fifth and last quarter by achieving its objectives fruitfully. The research is conducted to analyse the effectiveness of pro-women laws by analysing the trends in judicial precedents against the reported cases for their judgements, whether progressive or regressive. Women gender-based violence cases, reported and decided during past seven years from 2008-2015 at district, high court, Supreme Court and Federal Shriat Court level have been selected in this research from various sources.
"In this research, I have analysed 14 laws for judicial precedents, where unfortunately not a single case has been reported under most of the pro-women laws. Most of the women have seek justice under the family laws and they seem to be unaware of the special pro-women legislation" shared by Advocate Kazim Jan-Researcher, while presenting the research findings.
He further added that in his research he has also included the special laws for women Maternity Benefit Act, 2013, Protection of Breast Feeding and Child Nutrition Act, 2015 and Deserving Widows and Special Persons Welfare Foundation Act, 2014 which are often ignored while discussing the pro-women legislation in the province.
Moreover, Advocate Kazim shared that despite of existing pro-women laws there are several other challenges which are hindrances in the way of speedy access to justice for women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
"Khyber Pakhtunkhwa needs special legislation under Anti-Women Practices Act 2010, with proper implementation framework for the law to reduce the ratio of honour killing, rape, forced marriage and customary practices against women.
Qamar Naseem, Programme Co-ordinator Blue Veins said that the province is lacking a comprehensive approach mechanism of victim protection while the rehabilitation and reintegration of the survivors back into their communities is ignored completely under the legislative debates.
The district level seminar was attended by stakeholders from Civil society, legal fraternity, representatives from Provincial Human Rights Institutions and political activists from KP and FATA. Participants from FATA shared their concern about the existing laws limitations as most of them are not extended to tribal areas, which exclude major proportion of the KP women population from access to justice under these legislations.
Zar Ali Khan, member of PCSN shared that this research will help civil society for advocacy of new legislation, amendment and implementation of the existing legislation at provincial level. Most of the laws to counter the violence against women are passed by the federal government and very less contribution is seen from the provincial government to legislate for the subject.
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