pakistan

The victims of Pakistan’s sex trade

It’s another evening in one of the red light districts of Pakistan. It never seems to be quiet here except for the very early morning hours when the customers are home with their families or at work. The rickshaw drivers pound impatiently on their piercing horns, people shout at one another in Urdu or Punjabi, while stray, emaciated dogs bark and Bollywood music blares from the mujra dance halls. The humidity is relentless even though the sun has set several hours ago.

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Reporting from Kashmir: An abode of saints

After my INTACH meeting, we met up with the founder of the HELP foundation, the luminous, Nighat Shafi. She gave us an overview of all of her work, creating a home for mentally disabled children, widows, and schools. Her team also talked about their work in villages, providing grants for job training and scholarship.

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The case of a woman in the Swat Valley

What the Taliban employ is an authoritative form of rule called taazeer. Proponents say that if a crime is not provable beyond a doubt by using criteria outlined in Islamic law, it falls to the governing forces to decide the punishment. This allows cultural or social norms to influence judgment, and most commonly affect weak and vulnerable groups.

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The privatization of Pakistani women

Sexual crimes have been mainstays of Pakistani politics for nearly all of its sixty-one-year history and have been used to legitimise all sorts of regimes. This gives the Taliban ample room to justify yet another repugnant episode in the history of Pakistani women.

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