An average 1,000 women are murdered in the name of honour every year in the country, out of them majority cases are not reported to law enforcement agencies or concerned non-governmental organisations for taking appropriate action against the perpetrators.
Sources in Ministry of Women Development said that murder of women through various means-stove burning, karo-kari (honour killing), strangulation after rape, acid throwing and physical assault-has increased and the figures reported in various surveys were gross under-estimation of the real cases.
Violence against women is considered a human rights violation that is often fuelled by long-standing social and cultural norms that reinforce its acceptability. Domestic violence involves physical and sexual assault on women in their homes. Women are more at risk of experiencing violence in intimate relationships than anywhere else, they said.
At workplace and in public women have to undergo sexual harassment in the form of sexual propositions, songs, jokes, gestures, comments, pictures, accidental touching and molestation, they said.
According to Article 1 of the United Nations Declaration, violence against women is an act of gender-based violence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.
They said that tribal customs of Vani and Swara are still practised in tribal areas to settle the blood feuds among different tribes, where the young girls are married to the members of feuding tribes.
Moreover, Watta-Satta is another tribal custom where brides are exchanged between two families, sometimes girls as young as five years are exchanged as brides, they said. The dowry issue also breeds violence against women as brides are beaten, abused and even murdered for not carrying a good deal of dowry as expected by the husband's family, they said.
Keeping in view gravity of the situation, sources said that the erstwhile PML-Q government had drafted 'Prevention of Violence Against Women' bill in consultation with all the stakeholders to prevent violence against women.
Unfortunately, the proposed bill could not be moved to the National Assembly for consideration and passage due to unknown reasons, the sources said. However, the draft bill on 'Harassment against women at the workplace' is still lying with the Ministry of Women Development.