Azra Talat Saeed from Roots for Equity in her presentation, Sunflower, the Smiling Face of Lucre: Impact of Transnational Corporations on Peasant Women spoke about how globalization, WTO- related policies and the resultant trade liberalization have devastated peasant women involved in the agricultural sector and stressed that WTO should stay out of agriculture. She focused on how transnational corporations continue to control the structures of Pakistan's agriculture. One case study was a transnational corporation's monopoly over the seed sector and the effect it has on livelihoods, daily living conditions for the work force involved, and the emerging migration patterns for Sindhi peasant women. She questioned the repressive role of the Pakistani state that provides support to the transnational corporations, which she interprets as a violation of the fundamental rights of the Pakistani people. She recommended people's ownership over means of production as the only viable solution to this problem.
Zia Awan, a Pakistani lawyer working on discriminatory laws and human rights abuses in Pakistan, in his presentation, Linkages Between Gender Discrimination and Women's Trafficking: A National and Regional Study showed how trafficking, violence against women and HIV/AIDS are interconnected. Based on a statistical analysis of figures for the past five years regarding violence against women his presentation looked into how certain social customs are responsible for the ‘commodification' of women. He also highlighted the absence of effective mechanisms for the protection of women and lacunas in existing national laws.
Saba Gul Khattak from SDPI in her presentation Refugees or Displaced: The Future of Afghans in Pakistan discussed the status of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and highlighted their vulnerabilities regarding their legal position, their access to social services and civil rights. She also explained the impact of conflict and displacement on women and argued that though refugee women continue to work for longer hours while performing multiple tasks, they are still not able to earn wages equal to men. While giving policy options, she recommended that all Afghans staying back in Pakistan (and not repatriating to Afghanistan) should be registered to ensure their basic human rights and to give them a legal status that qualifies them for all civil rights.
Sohail Safdar from the Ministry of Women's Development chaired the session. Rubina Saigol from Action Aid, the discussant for the panel, said there is a real danger of starvation and famine if some of the WTO and TRIPS agreements go through. Therefore it is important that the Hong Kong ministerial should not be a success. In the mainstream discourse on women's rights in Pakistan, she pointed out to the absence of literature on the impact of liberalization, globalization and privatization on the rights of women and suggested work on these issues. With regard to the issue of trafficking she was of the opinion that the it should be linked with globalization as it is a question of labor moving where the capital is. Commenting on the paper on refugees she said it is very important to have a gendered understanding of how conflicts particularly affect women. She also asserted that citizenship is a question of human rights and human security versus national security and how states choose to define who is a citizen and who isn't.
Reported by Kiran Habib
| Email Article |  |
Print Article | |
Next Article |
PDF Format
