Journal of Development Policy Research & Practice (JoDPRP)
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Women’s Access to Justice: Ending Violence against Women in Pakistan
Get PDFIntimate Partner Violence (IPV) continues to be the most pervasive form of Violence against Women (VAW) in Pakistan, manifested through abuses varying in nature from physical, sexual, or economic to psychological form of violence. While these acts of violence occur at the micro level and are often explained in terms of individual or household characteristics, the macro landscape of access to justice, rule of law and governance mechanisms also shape the degree to which such acts continue to happen. Despite positive developments in the legal arena and policy landscape related to VAW, serious violations continue to take place which question the effectiveness of the mechanisms and structures in place to curb and prevent VAW. Based on an in-depth policy and legal analysis and drawing from a high-level discussion on barriers to women’s access to justice, especially related to IPV, this paper teases out the gaps and weaknesses that hinder women’s access to justice. The paper also elucidates a number of policy recommendations, which if adopted, can help ease women’s journey to achieve justice.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
Foreign Aid and Conflict in Pakistan: An Empirical Analysis
Get PDFThis paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and conflict in Pakistan. The country has witnessed many internal and external conflicts from 1961-2013, the period of analysis. By applying Heckman selection procedure, the study finds that aid increases conflict. Given the fungibility of aid, the results show that aid and military expenditure increase the probability of conflict and inflation, but decrease the probability of tax mobilisation. The paper concludes that strategic objectives of donors create rifts and insecurity in the recipient society which in turn increases military expenditure and arms import. It further reduces the capability to govern and reform.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
Gender Beliefs and Action Tendencies for Women’s Rights: Impact of National vis-à-vis International Policy Recommendations
Get PDFIn most democratic developing countries, including Pakistan, a crucial and still least prioritised domain is reforms in the status of women’s rights. As reflected in the rankings provided by The Gender Gap Index Report (World Economic Forum 2016), Pakistan stands second from the bottom among 144 countries. There are many organisations and programmes at the international and national level that are trying to influence the challenged countries to improve women’s rights policies and practices including the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); Pakistan’s commitment to meeting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and, the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW). The impact of national and international endorsement of the policies intended to improve women’s rights in Pakistan was explored in this survey. The survey was designed to see under which conditions, respondents would support policies focusing on women’s rights. The two conditions in the experiment were framed as such that the proposed reforms came from the National Government (national condition) or by the United Nations (international condition). As a comparative baseline, a control condition was added in which the source of proposals was not mentioned (control condition). The survey was conducted with 619 university students (males: 51%; females: 49 %). Data was collected from the students of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad; and, the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad, from March through August 2016. Results of the study indicated that compared to the control condition, the respondents in the national and international condition expressed higher support for policy reforms for women’s rights. Furthermore, participants in the national and international condition were more likely to offer help in the implementation of these policy reforms. At the policy level, the survey supported the claim that national level endorsement of the reforms, compared to the United Nations endorsement, makes propagation and acceptance of the women’s rights reforms easier for the general public.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
Global Warming: Evidence, Causes, Consequences and Mitigation
Get PDFStudies suggest that rise in the global temperature since 1880 (estimated 0.8 to 1.0oC) is real and considerably alarming. Although natural causes have been responsible for repeated global temperature changes in the geological past, the present rise is commonly attributed to the concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), in the atmosphere. CO2, which takes hundreds of years to be removed from the atmosphere, has increased significantly over the past century. Increasing consumption of fossil fuels in energy production, industry, transport, agriculture and other human activity has been causing the emission of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s system. More than 2°C increase in temperature by the end of this century would be severe if not catastrophic.Global warming would result in melting of glaciers and polar icecaps, water depletion, insecurity of food, sea-level rise and threat to coastal regions, coral reefs extinction, migration of species and natural disasters. The potential threats of climate change are assumed to be more severe to the less developed countries because of their lack of resilience and preparedness. The situation, according to some, is desperate and urgently requires remedial steps such as removal of CO2 from atmosphere, afforestation, use of clean energy, and changing our life style to control Earth’s temperature. The world needs to unite in taking necessary remedial steps on an urgent basis to ensure sustainable development.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
Effects of Anthropogenic Activities on Pore Pressure of the Earth’s Crust - A Desk Review
Get PDFThe objective of this chapter is to identify and analyse the major anthropogenic factors affecting pore pressure of the rocks inside the Earth’s crust which determines the frequency of earthquakes and is responsible for causing seismic events, eventually leading to seismic movements. These activities include construction of dams, hydraulic fracking, carbon sequestration, and radiations from certain technologies such as the United States’ High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) which is now being used for research purposes. It also studies how temperature and pressure are related and trigger earthquakes and how global warming is affecting the Earth’s pore pressure. The effects of these factors were assessed on different parts of the world such as in the USA, Pakistan and India, where earthquakes were triggered. The study is based on desk research, including review of research papers and case studies on the subject. The findings from this secondary review indicated that fracking and building reservoirs have resulted in significant seismic events in many parts of the world, even in areas such as Oklahoma, USA, which were not seismically active, but which witnessed earthquakes after fracking and reservoir projects were initiated (Rubinstein and Mahani 2015). Moreover, there exists a positive correlation between temperature increase and earthquake frequency (Usman et al. 2016). Furthermore, the chapter also studies if the radiations emitted under programmes such as HAARP can cause disturbance in the earth’s crust because very low frequency radiations emitted from transmitters towards ionosphere, gets reflected back to the earth, can also trigger seismic movements in the crust (Kim et al. 2002). However, human factors such as building of artificial dams, and hydraulic fracking are also major contributing factors towards increasing the frequency of earthquakes around the globe (Petersen et al. 2016). The chapter discusses how the Sendai Framework can play a role to reduce the impacts of anthropogenic activities which can trigger disasters, such as earthquakes.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
Factors Contributing to Gender Disparity in Education in Rural Areas: Evidence from Three Districts of Punjab, Pakistan
Get PDFEducation is an important human capital; and, it is the fundamental right of every human being irrespective of gender to acquire knowledge through education. Social scientists have highlighted the significance of female education without which socio-economic growth, especially in Asia, remains slow. However, gender disparity in education persists in rural peripherals of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Iran, Nepal and Bangladesh (UNESCO 2015). This deplorable situation is subject to multiple socio-economic and cultural barriers. In order to unveil these militating attributes, present investigation was conducted in three districts of the Punjab province in Pakistan from March to June 2016. The province is divided into three different zones: Northern, Central and Southern. From each zone, one district was purposively selected as the study area. From the selected districts (Sargodha, Khushab and Bhakhar), 100 rural households from each district were selected through multi-stage simple random sampling technique. The data were collected from 300 household heads and from their spouses through in-depth individual interviews to find out the difference in opinion of the male and female respondents. The collected data was analysed using SPSS. Paired t-test was used to find out the difference in responses of male and female respondents. In order to find out the difference in intensity of factors in the three districts, F-test was applied. Results showed that there is highly significant difference between age of male family heads and their spouses (wives) (χ2=50.121 and P<0.05). Similar trend was found in educational status of male heads and their spouses. Cross tabulation indicated that educational status of wives was low as compared to their husbands. Analysis showed that a number of socio-economic factors are responsible for the existing gender disparity with reference to education in the study areas. Respondents identified low income, high educational expenditures, low educational level of parents (especially the mother), and security concerns of parents regarding sexual harassment as the major factors impeding female education. Results of the F-test showed that there exists difference in intensity of factors in the three study districts of Punjab which contribute towards gender disparity in education. Highest intensity (x =2.74/3.00) was found in district Bhakhar as it is a remote district of Punjab with higher poverty rate, followed by district Khushab and Sargodha. It is recommended that the Government at the national level should take serious steps in creating conducive environment to enhance female enrolment rate in rural localities.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.
On the Muslim Minority in India
Get PDFWestern media usually describe India as ‘the largest democracy in the world’, paying little attention to the various dark corners surrounding this rosy picture , especially if one takes into consideration the difficulties its neighbours have had in their roads to democracy. It is true that the country has historically benefitted from generally good press in the West due to concerns about the increasing assertiveness of another demographic giant – the People’s Republic of China. As the centre of global gravity moves inexorably towards Asia, Western Europe and North America, with their ageing populations, seek to keep on board allies with whom they believe they share a similar system of values. Above all, western powers have their gaze fixed on the Indian market, assuming that its annual economic growth of 7% can offer rich dividends.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acquired almost rock star status in recent years: November 2015 saw him address crowds packed inside London’s Wembley Stadium, while in June 2016, American Congressmen and women applauded him as he made an extended comparison of the virtues of American and Indian democracy. Incidentally, he boasted that the ‘biggest democracy in the world’ guarantees equal rights to all its citizens, whatever their religious beliefs. Indeed, he declared himself in favour of stronger Indo-American linkages, especially, he added, when it came to the fight against terrorism (Kelly 2016).
Some observers may recall a remark made by Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks during The Big Fight, a Star News Channel debate programme, on 14 September 2001. He stated that, ‘All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims’ (Engineer 2015). During political debates, especially televised ones, politicians often make use of such rhetorical devices to nurture or boost their popularity.
Even limiting oneself to India itself, such a declaration was factually incorrect. According to figures for the year 2014 cited by Aakar Patel in a revealingly titled article, Most extremists in India are not Muslim – they are Hindu, published on 8 June 2015, the country had: Some 976 deaths from terrorism (or extremism, whatever name one wants to use for it) in India. Of these, the most (465) came in the North East. The second most (314) came from left-wing extremism, by a group of people called Maoists. Deaths in Jammu & Kashmir, assuming one wants to attribute the whole lot to terrorism, stood at 193. Outside of these conflict theatres, Islamist extremism claimed four lives (Patel 2015). India is home to a very significant Muslim population that is scarcely reassured by the absolute majority enjoyed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (India People’s Party, Hindu nationalist in outlook) in the Lok Sabha (House of the People, the lower house of India’sbicameral parliament).
Before looking at the fragile position of the Muslim community and the campaigns it believes are conducted at its expense, the author would first like to see how India has projected its power across the New World Order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. India rightly seeks recognition as a great power, but is inclined to forget that in a sense, it remains a colossus with feet of clay – top end scientific research juxtaposed with aching poverty. It is made up of a mix of different religious communities, harmony between which has been key to the successful construction of the nation. More extreme sections of the Sangh Parivar (a group of Hindu nationalist organisations) who play up – without always sticking close to the facts – the threat of rapid population growth of the Muslim community. This seems to neglect one of the attributes that has the potential to increase India’s global influence: its 180 million Muslim inhabitants that have the potential to project India’s power in the Islamic world.
This work, therefore, seeks to first of all look at India’s position internationally, and how this has enabled the most extreme Hindu nationalist components to adopt policies and political positions of concern with regard to minorities in general and Muslims in particular. Narendra Modi was formally cleared of all the various accusations made against him pertaining to his role in Gujarat in 2002. However, some schools of thought continue to cast doubt as to his innocence.
Given the difficult relations between India and Pakistan in recent times, the author will abstain from any recommendations as to what the Indian government should or should not do. However, the author would encourage India’s civil society to undertake a greater role in reinforcing inter-communal harmony so necessary to the construction of a country that remains uniquely diverse in a world characterised by a worrying level of polarisation.
The scope of this article is related to the following SDG / SDGs.