"There is always room to improve laws and improve the state of human rights in almost any country"

On November 15, 2011, the National Assembly of Pakistan passed a landmark bill on the “Prevention of Anti-Women Practices.” Dr. Donya Aziz, Member of Pakistani Parliament and member of the Executive Council of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, spearheaded the effort to pass the historic bill.

The bill criminalizes exploitative and discriminatory practices such as forced marriages and denial of women’s rightful inheritance. People who engage in these practices, which are customary in some parts of Pakistan, are now subject to hefty fines or up to seven years in prison.

Pakistan has a rich history of influential women leaders, and yet gender discrimination persists at multiple levels of Pakistani society. As a result, the passage of the “Prevention of Anti-Women Practices” bill has rightly been heralded as a historic feat, congratulated by Prime Minister Gilani amongst others.

Jessica Zimerman of the Parliamentarians Network spoke with Dr. Aziz about the bill, next steps, and lessons. 

PN: Can you give a bit more of the background on the bill?

DA: The “Prevention of Anti-Women Practices” bill is a criminal law amendment bill. The 18th amendment went into effect in June of this year and this amendment devolved a lot of federal powers to the provinces, including education, health and women's rights, among other things. This has reduced the capacity for the National Assembly and the Senate to legislate on such issues.  However, the Parliament still holds the power to amend criminal law, which is why the bill is a criminal law amendment bill.

The gist of the bill seeks for the State to first recognize certain cultural practices that are in vogue in certain in parts of the country and then to criminalize them because they discriminate, or in some form or another, hamper women's rights.

A lot of these customary practices are actually not in line with the injunctions of Islam. So Islam does not allow for these practices in the first place, but because there is no recognition on behalf of the State and no criminalization of the practices, they continue to happen based on cultural traditions.

The various practices that we have criminalized are:

• Wani Custom (also known as Sawara): This is a practice in which girls are given into marriage to resolve civil disputes or criminal liabilities. Jirgas are usually the bodies responsible for decisions on these matters, so for example, if somebody murders someone from another family, the families will go to the Jirga. The Jirga might decree that a girl from the murderer's family will be given to the victim's family in order to settle the dispute. The bill criminalizes this practice with a jail sentence minimum of 5 years and a fine of 500,000 rupees.
• Forced marriages: The law seeks a punishment of 5 years minimum of jailtime and a fine of 500,000 rupees.
• Marriage to the Koran: This cultural practice occurs in certain parts of Sindh in which a girl will ‘marry the Koran’ or swear on the Holy Koran that she will not marry – there is no such practice that Islam propagates. If a girl does not marry and leave her father’s house (or brother's house after her father dies), then it’s believed that she has no need to ask for her share of the inheritance and therefore the property that passes from father to children will not be properly divided. This practice would have a jail sentence of 5 years and a fine of 500,000 rupees.
• Depriving a woman of her inheritance: In Islam, the Koran dictates how much people inherit. Pakistani law upholds this Islamic injunction on inheritance through various laws and in accordance with Sharia. The Pakistani State does not recognize a system of living wills – when somebody dies, the State will, according to Sharia, divide all the property amongst the heirs. This is an automatic process and there is no way you can contest it. Men are able to deprive a woman of their inheritance through procedural means. For instance, when somebody dies, a succession certificate must be issued by the State. All the legal heirs are supposed to take in the death certificate and present it to the State for a secession certificate. The State will then advertise for 3 days that the individual has died, asking for all legal heirs to come forward, after which the secession certificate is issued. But men may lie and falsely say that there are no women heirs so that the women never appear on the secession certificate. In practical terms this means that if you are looking to divide land, you take the certificate to the land registry department and they automatically divide it amongst the heirs. The State then cannot recognize the women for the division of the property. The law seeks a minimum of 7 years in prison and fine of 1 million rupees.

PN: The bill targets cultural, not religious, practices - what was the role of religion?

DA: Religious political parties endorsed the bill and the Islamic Ideology Council recognizes that the customary practices mentioned in the bill are unIslamic. Across the board everyone agreed that Islam does not allow for these practices and therefore agreed that having them criminalized is in accordance with Islamic law and Pakistani law.

PN: What needs to happen now in order for the bill to become law?

DA: The next step is that the bill will be transmitted from the National Assembly to the Senate. The Senate needs to pass it without any amendments because if they choose to amend it, then the procedure becomes very complicated and we will have to have a joint sitting with Parliament to approve the amended bill which would be a little more cumbersome and difficult to execute.

I am hopeful that the Senate will pass it without amendments. I do realize that there are improvements that could be made, and am open to incorporating them in a new bill further down the line after this one is enacted.

PN: Historically, private member bills have a very low passage rate and a bill similar to this one was tabled in 2006, but was not passed. How were you able to overcome such challenges and see that the bill was unanimously passed in Pakistan’s National Assembly?

DA: In general, we only touched upon the practices that were clearly unIslamic. When you talk about the wider ambit of women's rights in Pakistan, there are a number of other issues that women's rights groups or human rights groups would argue should have been added or need to be addressed. But the religion is not as clear about some of these other issues and it would require a much longer consultative process to come to a conclusion on how the law can be amended to criminalize those things.

PN: Would you then consider the next step to tackle those more contentious issues?

DA: Absolutely. There is always room to improve laws and improve the state of human rights in almost any country and that is the logical next step. We did not want to confuse matters at this stage by adding too many things in one bill. A lot of the failure in other rights bills has been precisely that – too many issues are tackled, or there isn't agreement on whether or not certain things should be criminalized. It was a tactical decision that we made to touch things that were not contentious in that respect.

PN: Are there lessons from your experience that may be helpful to other MPs, especially those that face similar cultural and religious contexts, such as women lawmakers in Afghanistan? What advice do you have for other lawmakers?

DA: One piece of advice is that it is always easier to start with what you can achieve rather than being overly ambitious and trying to do everything at the same time.

Also, it’s really important, especially in countries like ours [Pakistan and Afghanistan], to take baby steps because the more conservative elements in our societies tend to view women's rights issues as ideologies that have been brought in from the West.

What I have found that was very useful was to have a bill that highlighted everything from the local context and show that Islam in itself is very conducive to promoting women's rights, but it depends on how you frame the issues and frame what you are trying to achieve.

Once conservative elements of a society are on board with certain issues, then the leap for them to agree on other things is smaller.

PN: A minority of cynics in the media have claimed that the bill does not go far enough and they are skeptical as to the bill’s ability to prevent violations from taking place. What is your response to such opinions?  

DA: Well I can understand that there are issues with implementation and enforcement, but that does not mean that we shouldn’t legislate – because unless you legislate, you really can't get to the practical issue of enforcement and implementation.

The fact that the Parliament is looking at passing these kinds of laws is just one aspect of a very broad-based effort: the Parliament does its part through legislation and also through awareness-raising among constituencies; the media does it through highlighting implementation problems; civil society, law enforcement and judiciary all contribute in their own way, so it’s a very holistic group effort. Legislation is the first step of it - until the State recognizes that something is a crime, you cannot move forward effectively on the other fronts.