The Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation (Awam) organised a training workshop on "Community Education for Women Rights" at WID Centre in Daud Nager Faisalabad. The workshop demanded of government to abolish and amend the gender-based discriminatory laws.
28 male and female belonging to different religions and different walks of life from 10 union councils of Iqbal Town participated in the workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to analyse the laws, traditions, customs and social attitudes, which affect the lives of women. The facilitators of the workshop included Naseem Anthony, Shazia George, Nazia Sardar, Afsheen Patras and Zafar Iqbal.
The facilitators said, "There are such customs and traditions in practice in our society which are contradictory to the fundamental rights as enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan, therefore Government must introduce laws to snub such heinous customs and traditions against women to ensure women empowerment". They added.
"The unproductively and decline in society prevails unless gender based traditions are reviewed with changing time and conditions". They further said, "Few feudal across country are against women empowerment, so that women are kept away from development fields, are confined to visit few family houses only and have no authority of their own lives". Every individual has to play a vital role to condemn such kind of inhuman and discriminatory behaviours towards a specific group, they added.
While concluding the programme facilitators and participants called upon the Government that: Discriminatory laws ie Hadood Ordinance, Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, Evidence Act and Citizenship Act should be repealed; Customary and informal courts should be outlawed; Laws should be constituted to curb inhuman customary practices; new laws for the protection of womens rights should be introduced, existing laws should be strictly implemented and laws containing gender based discrimination should be amended.