Speaking at the launch of "Women's Right to Land and Hunger-Free Women Campaign," in Islamabad the other day, an Action Aid official highlighted the significance of the programme describing it as "awakening for our rural women, an awareness for them about their right to economic and social empowerment."
She also made the startling remarks that Pakistan has the fifth highest number of hungry people in the world, of which 70 percent are women and a quarter of its population cannot afford two square meals a day. Indeed, Pakistan faces food shortages, but there is no way this country, based as its economy is on agriculture, could be home to the world's fifth highest number of hungry people.
It looks all the more ironic that Action Aid, famous for its fund raising activities to end hunger in Africa, should have its facts so wrong, unless the two organisations are completely unrelated. As a matter of fact, Pakistan ranks 61st in the Global Hunger Index for 2008, released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) as recently as October 16 to mark the Word Food Day.
On a scale of 100 points, with zero being the best score, it gets 21.7 percent points. To put things in a proper perspective, this index has ranked our neighbour and an emerging world economic power, India, at 66th place with 23.7 percent points. According to IFPRI, not a single state in India falls within the 'low hunger' or 'moderate hunger' categories.
That, of course, does not mean hunger is not a serious issue in this country, but that Action Aid is completely lost on this particular score. Its awareness campaign for rural women, though, has a special importance in our context.
The organisation's Manager for Women's Rights claimed that over 3000 women farmers had been mobilised in Sindh and Balochistan, urging the government to recognise them as farmers and to secure their right to land through legislation. All power to the campaigners for a better deal for women engaged in agricultural activity.
Women make substantial contribution to agricultural activity from sowing and harvesting to taking care of the livestock, cooking and housekeeping. Yet they have little say in decisions that affect family or individual affairs. The inheritance law gives women the right to own land. Islam gave them this right more than 1400 years ago whereas women in Europe attained it only a little over a century ago - and other property.
Yet most land owning families, particularly in Sindh and southern Punjab refuse to respect this right. In doing so they resort to all sorts of tricks, including marrying women to the Quran. Campaigns such as the present one can surely play a useful role in ridding this society of customs that are perpetrated in the name of traditions as well as religion to deprive women of their right to own land.
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