Towards Gender Empowerment
 

For the past 7-8 years, we in the Society for Gender Empowerment (SOGE), have been doing advocacy to promote good causes and global best practices in Chital. I deliberately took premature retirement 11 years before superannuating with a view to repaying the debt to the soil that brought me up and made me what I am today. Making education as a spring board of my activities, I have chosen gender empowerment as my second priority and for this purpose we established Society for Gender Equality (SOGE) in Garam Chashma in 2004. Our other initiatives include Pamir Cultural Forum, heritage preservation and physical environment; in the last one a Scottish charity SOLAS Trust is our valued partner, while Rehmat Ali Jaffer Dost is working for the preservation of our heritage and to make Chitral clean and green. Despite meager resources we achieved many successes in creating awareness about these issues and caused actions to be taken to redress wrongs committed against these causes. Gender was not our random pick.

Chitral has been traditionally presented as an area where development has been driven by women and for this very reason it is called “Awrat Abad” but unfortunately women are not allowed to benefit from the fruits of their labor and some times they are the worst sufferers. In the average 20 females commit suicide every year to escape the helplessness and hopelessness in their lives.

I am mentioning four cases which would give us a feel of the kind of problems that gender issues involve and in all these cases our intercession made some difference. In one case a dumb and deaf girl was raped and village elders got the couple married as a cover up. After the child, a baby girl, was born, the mother was divorced and baby taken away. Her mother ran from pillar to post to get the full amount of alimony and came to us for help. In the second case a girl was given in second marriage to an aged outsider. The girl ran away from her husband fearing life threats and she was rescued. We also got legal aid for her Khula but while the case was under trial she was again handed over to her in-laws by local guarantors and we had to invoke tribal mechanism to ensure her safety. In the third case a girl ran away with another boy after she was forcibly engaged to another man with a different cultural background, who attacked the couple soon after their marriage and killed her husband. Local jirga formed at the behest of the guilty party, intimidated the victim family to forgive the culprit, otherwise they would also be killed. We protested at the unjust deal and the case is still pending in court. In the fourth case two adults married in court despite life threats. We facilitated dialogue between the parties which gave them breathing space to find a solution, though not an ideal one.

Yesterday when I checked my email box I was happily surprised to find excerpts from a debate being carried out on the Face book on gender issues. The debate is being facilitated by Nighat A.Shah in USA, who is my niece and Chief Patron of SOGE. Dr. Mir Afzal Tajik has done well to point out that debates on the Internet or seminars in 5-star hotels will only serve the cause when we are able to develop a strategy to a make a difference in the lives of people living in far-flung rural areas. This reminded me of the remarks of one of my bosses, when I was in government service. She used to say that presentation mafias were depriving people of development by spending most of their funds in activities benefiting the chosen ones without having an eye on the results for the common man and then covering it up in their presentations. These people, she used to call drawing room activists in the same way as there are drawing room politicians in Pakistan who know nothing about ground realities and insist on “All is well”. I was also touched by the offer of my dear friend Dr.Tariqullah to arrange a workshop in Chitral on this issue. Dr.Tajik has done a lot already and this is more than a single individual has ever done in rural Chitral and it is good to know that Dr.Tariqullah is now staging a come back. A scholar of his caliber and background can really make a difference. We all owe a lot to Chitral- a haven of peace in these troubled times and our identity- to which we must all return one day because the new world order, defining national boundaries on ethnic lines, makes it difficult to make another’s soil our permanent home for all times to come given the color of our skin and inevitable economic downturn, which might create security problems for the immigrants, not to mention equal respect as citizens. I feel elated and encouraged. With such people around to extend a helping hand or repaying debt to the soil of Chitral and invest in it, we are bound to succeed. I also express my gratitude to Fardad Ali Shah for making the pages of Chitralnews available for promoting good causes. Despite being semi computer literate I used these pages to good effect with some help from my daughter Fozia, who is equally passionate to see a better Chitral to bequeath to our future generations. She put my name on Face book without my knowing or being able to use it. Only when Nighat saheba told me that I came to know about it and have started to learn how to use it.

As Muslims we believe that saving one innocent life is tantamount to saving humanity. Taking motivation from this Quranic verse I have been doing advocacy to establish a safe home (Darul Aman) to accommodate people in distress especially women suffering from marital woes, domestic violence or hopelessness, which drive many to commit suicide. Sara Hashwan, Chairperson Hashoo Foundation promised to build such a facility. Troker, a Scotish charity working with AKRSP for women empowerment also showed interest in the project, after I gave them presentation, although their local interlocutors opposed the idea for being anathema to local values. However a recent occurrence has made pressing case for this project to come on ground. During an under-age elopement case trial when the girl refused to go home with her legal guardians, the court ordered to send her to Darul Aman. At that stage it transpired that there was no Darul Aman in Chitral and the girl had to be sent to Peshawar. No one was ready for this eventuality and as a result the girl was motivated after some effort to go with a relative. Such cases may arise in future as well. It is, therefore, not surprising that many girls caught between the rock and a hard place choose suicide. Hiding heads in the sand like ostrich and giving of human sacrifice to protect a non existent value will take us nowhere. No one can deny that Darul Amans have saved lives. There are good and bad people every where. Had there been no Asma Jahangir and her Darul Aman, Pakistan’s human rights record would have been much poorer.

Taking cue from the positive comments of my friends appearing on the Face book, I invite them to join us in making this project a reality. This facility will not only save lives but would also impart skills to its inmates to stand on their own two feet. We have philanthropists who can sustain this project once it is constructed. It can even generate its own resources by offering its training facilities to the general public, especially women, and which by itself would emerge into an empowerment project. Dr.Tajik and Nighat Akbar have shown us the path of making a difference in individual lives. Dozens of orphan and poor girls have got degree level education with scholarship support coming from them. Quite a few have got good jobs and are supporting others. Dr.Mir Baiz Khan helped educate an orphan shelter less girl and she is now completing her B.A and next year she would be on job looking after her widow mother and younger brother and sister.

I appeal to Chitrali diasporas to include less fortunate Chitralis, especially girls, in their sponsorship list and educate them. By helping one girl to get good education we would be building good families, as Napoleon once said “give me good mothers and I shall give you good nation”. Apne liye jine wale kiya khak jiya karte hain, zindagi woh hai jo dusron ke kam aye. So let us make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate Chitralis. -- Comment by Islamuddin, Chitral, 25 Jan 2012

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