KARACHI: Khairpur, the home district of Pakistan’s Sindh province Chief Minister Qaim Shah tops the list of districts in the province with the highest number of violence incidents against women recorded during the third quarter of the year, says a new report.
In all 421 incidents of violence against women and girls were reported and 72 of them were recorded in Khairpur alone, according to the quarterly report titled ‘Situation of Violence Against Women in Sindh (July-September 2014)’.
Prepared by the Aurat Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working on women-related issues, the report says the 421 incidents involved 534 women and girls but FIRs were registered only in 66 cases.
The report, based on figures published in newspapers over a period of three months, says that the issue of violence against women was rooted in social norms and economic dependence while the discriminatory practices were the result of the patriarchal system.
Gender-based violence helped maintain women in subordinate roles and contributed to their low level of political participation and to their lower level of education, skills and work opportunities, it adds.
A badly-worded FIR also harms prosecution cases obstructing women’s access to effective remedies, the report says.
Most of the time police are not informed about such incidents, while some of those reported to the police are not recorded in roznamcha (police diary), the report says. Even if a few cases are lodged, inquiries are not properly conducted and the matter is eventually shelved, it adds.
It was observed that urban areas were fast catching up with the rural areas as far as far as violence against women was concerned, as out of the 421 cases, 197 were reported in the urban areas.
INTERNEWS
