As the first woman senator from Pakistan's lowest Dalit caste, Krishna Kumari Kohli has an ambitious to-do list, from tackling honour killings to kidnappings and child marriage. But for the former child bride from a poor Hindu family, the need to improve women and girls' health and education in the conservative Muslim-majority nation is closest to her heart.
"Never in my wildest of dreams did I think I'd ever become a senator," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "If I can make a dent in these two areas, I'd have made a difference for times to come and my candidature would all have been worth it." Kohli's election on Saturday marks a milestone in Pakistan both as a woman - who hold about one in five parliamentary seats - and as a member of the Dalit caste - a term she rejects as derogatory.
Dalits, formerly known as untouchables in the Hindu caste system, are at the bottom of the social hierarchy in neighbouring India and face widespread discrimination. Most of Pakistan's Hindu minority live in southern Sindh province, where 39-year-old Kohli is from, one of its poorest regions with high rates of child marriage and poverty. Kohli married at the age of 15, which is not unusual in Pakistan, where one in five girls marry before the age of 18, according to the United Nations.
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