UNDP - Pakistan - Gender Justice and Protection

Background

Violence against Women is pervasive across class, religion, ethnicity, religion and rural/urban divide in Pakistan. Violence, and the threat of such violence, is a form of control that affects women’s health, their ability to pursue education and employment and contributes to the low social indicators for women’s development in the country. It is, therefore, important to create an enabling environment for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights of women.

Objectives

The Gender Justice and Protection (GJP) Project aims to contribute towards sustainable reduction in Violence against Women (VAW) in accordance with the government’s policy commitments. The project has established a fund to support promising initiatives from the Government and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to combat VAW in the priority areas of capacity building, advocacy and awareness-raising, action-oriented research, legal aid and up-scaling promising practices.

Key Results

Advocacy and Awareness: Awareness on multiple facets of VAW has been raised through 210 theatre shows/puppet performances, 920 awareness raising seminars, 170 school level awareness raising sessions and 183 radio programmes. 88,505 posters of 1041 types, 49,900 stickers of 29 types, 535 broachers/flyers printed in 86,453 numbers, 27 booklets printed in 35,446 numbers, 2 IEC kits printed in 1,400 numbers, and 5,725 newsletters disseminated amongst beneficiaries.

Capacity Building:Capacity building initiatives targets religious scholars, medical officers, police officers, factory workers, civil society representatives, para-legal workers, media professionals to contribute their part for the eradication of VAW in a sustainable manner. A key achievement of these initiatives was witnessed in district Dir, where GJP’s initiative in collaboration with Khwendo Kor, brought back approximately 2500 girls to school by supporting make-shift schooling arrangement.

Provision of Free Of Cost Legal Aid; 20 legal aid, counseling and referral centres. has been established. These centres provided legal aid to nearly 1,900 women and counseling/referral services to over 33,000 women. GJP implementing partners have also been running 13 help-lines which provide women increased access to these services. These services have succeeded in helping over 1000 women in their social rehabilitation. Additionally, 20 women were released from SWARA (a tribal tradition to exchange girls/ women to settle blood feuds). The GJP Project also provided critical support to the Sindh Police Department in establishing four anti Karo Kari (honour killing) cells in four districts of Sindh province. These cells have intervened in local Karo Kari (honour killing) disputes and safeguard women from being murdered in the name of honour. The GJP Project has also assisted the Regional Directorate of Human Rights in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in notifying female parole officers to help women prisoners access the facility of bail, which these prisoners were earlier deprived off because of social exclusion as the customary practices of the province do not allow the interaction of female prisoners with male advocates.

Action-oriented Research; Conducted 18 district level baseline/research studies which focused on researching forms and magnitude of VAW practices, coping mechanisms, rehabilitation facilities, other VAW mitigating initiatives etc in relation to specific VAW facets.

Supporting Legislation on VAW; Facilitated the Acid Crime Control and Prevention Bill by arranging broad based consultations to seek variety of perspective from stakeholders i.e. elected representatives, civil society, academia, government officials, health professionals etc.

Duration	2007-2012
Status	Ongoing
Budget	USD 4.23 million
Project Delivery	USD 2.52 million
Location	Countrywide
Programme Officer	Sharmeela Rassool
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