Pakistan Moves to End Impunity for Rapists

ipsnews.net - *This story updates Raped and Abandoned by the Law published on May 3, 2014. LAHORE, Feb 3 2017 (IPS) - Amid a wave of reforms to tighten the country’s laws on honour killings and sexual assault, on Feb. 2, the Sindh Assembly passed a law making DNA testing in rape cases mandatory in the province.

It follows on the heels of a unanimous vote by Pakistan’s Parliament last October to plug gaps in the criminal justice system and boost the rate of conviction in rape cases.

The conviction rate for rape in Pakistan has been less than four percent, prompting protests and legal reforms.

For long, the sole reliance on eyewitnesses and circumstantial evidence has benefitted the accused in rape cases and conviction rates have remained negligible in the country.

The new national law, called The Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, also makes DNA evidence admissible, calls for verdicts in rape cases to be announced within three months, and allows filing of appeals within six months.

It also gives approval to holding of in-camera trials and use of technological aids to record testimony of victims and witnesses in order to save victims from humiliation. In the past, many victims and their families would not pursue cases for this very reason.

Pakistani women risking all to fight for their rights

The attack Kainat Soomro suffered is more than any 13-year-old should endure, but sadly, her victimization didn't end there—and she's not the only one to suffer sexual violence followed by victim blaming, in a troubling trend that makes victims afraid to come forward. Read an excerpt below, and click through to read more about the bravery Soomro and her family have shown in the face of stigma and tragedy; as well as the stories of other women who survived their attacks, even saw their attackers sent to jail, only to be treated as outcasts themselves. tampabay.com - KARACHI, Pakistan — Kainat Soomro was 13 years old and on her way to buy a toy for her newborn niece when three men kidnapped her, held her for several days and repeatedly raped her.

Eight years later, she is still battling for justice. She sits on a steel-framed bed in her parents' three-bedroom home and holds her blue shawl tight around her body. When she describes the horror of her captivity, her voice is barely a whisper, but it gains strength when she talks of the fight she has been waging: going to Pakistan's courts, holding protests, rejecting the rulings of the traditional Jirga council, taking on the powerful landlord and politician who she says are protecting her attackers.

The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of sexual abuse, but Kainat has gone public with her case. Her battle for justice has inspired an award-winning 2013 movie, Outlawed in Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot by the Taliban, invited Kainat to the Nobel award ceremony, and her fund has given Kainat financial help.

Yet Kainat's family has paid a high price for her bravery. One sister remains unmarried, and another was divorced because her in-laws were ashamed to be associated with Kainat. In 2010, her brother was killed over his sister's refusal to stay silent.

Read the rest here.

Landless women farmers receive land tenancy for the first time in Pakistan

asiapacific.unwomen.org - Durdana is a young widower from Pakistan’s Dadu District in Sindh Province. She is one of 1,214 landless women farmers and sharecroppers who have received land tenancy rights for the first time in their life. Speaking of her new status, Durdana shares that farming is her life: “I do not know anything else but working in the fields. Who could think a poor female widower like me would be given land! For the first time in my life I can say something is mine. This land, as far as the eye can see is mine - this paper says so. This is my land and I am its queen,” she says beamingly.

UN Women Pakistan in collaboration with local partners, Baanhn Beli and Gorakh Foundation, in Mirpur Khas and Dadu Districts, respectively, is working with 1,214 vulnerable rural women farmers, like Durdana, to acquire land tenancy rights from their feudal and tribal landholders. These landless women farmers were trained and mentored to prepare tenancy agreements and landholding maps with their male landlords.

In the process, they have been provided with a viable livelihood option that could take them out of poverty and enable their upward social mobility.