ISLAMABAD: The Balochistan Assembly recently passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, 2014. The legislation appears to generally follow the pattern of the landmark bill passed on the same issue by the Sindh Assembly in March 2013, the only other province to have passed such legislation.
It defines different forms of domestic violence, including physical, sexual and economic abuse, stalking, harassment, etc as well as verbal and emotional abuse, although the definition of the latter is not as wide-ranging as that in the Sindh legislation.
The Balochistan bill expands the ambit of domestic violence to also include violence visited upon domestic servants.
“The main gap I can see in it is that [unlike the Sindh legislation] there are no direct penalties specified for abuses that aren’t covered by the Pakistan Penal Code,” says Khawar Mumtaz, chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW).
“These penalties are to be decided by the protection committees, although the bill does include penalties for breaching the committee’s orders.”
After the 18th Amendment in April 2010, provinces and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) became individually responsible for legislation on devolved subjects, including women’s rights. (Legislation for the ICT is passed by the Senate and the National Assembly. The ICT’s domestic violence bill was only passed by the Senate which means it has not yet become law.)
Legislation on domestic violence is assuming urgency with time. According to a report by Aurat Foundation, the incidence of domestic violence increased by 62 percent between 2008 and 2012.
Shibboleths about “privacy” and “sanctity of chadar aur chardiwari” by conservative quarters in parliament, along with political quid pro quos, have long kept domestic violence out of the purview of the law even after other forms of violence against women, such as honour killing and forced marriage, have been criminalised.
A sustained campaign by rights activists in cooperation with parliamentarians led to the unanimous passage of a bill on domestic violence by the National Assembly on August 4, 2009.
However, the bill met with a roadblock in the Senate largely on account of objections by Maulana Sheerani of the JUI-F and lapsed after three months, the time within which it had to be passed by the upper house in order for it to become law.
“If the Kerry-Lugar Bill hadn’t come up, the domestic violence bill would have been passed,” says Anis Haroon, former chairperson of the NCSW. “It was put on the backburner to appease the religious parties.”
That it was the comparatively liberal government of the PPP-ANP which allowed political expediency to derail the bill illustrates how women’s rights can be a convenient bargaining chip. Nevertheless, during the last government, a number of pro-women laws were passed.
INTERNEWS
