Ongoing Projects
Earlier Initiatives
 Ongoing Projects
- Engaging with East Pakistan/Bangladesh: Building a Field of Scholarship and Dialogue.
Earlier Initiatives
A Peace Studies programme has been established at SDPI with support from
the Ford Foundation. It has four components:
a.
Collection of partition stories/Oral history of partition in two districts
in Punjab
The objective of the project is to document the oral history of the 1947
Partition which saw the biggest movement of people in history. Friends
became foes instantaneously and the world witnessed the worst form of
genocide. Despite the fact that this left more than 10 million people
dead, there are several instances where many people came forward and protected
the persons of other religions.
b. Security discourse
in the post-nuclear phase in Pakistan
This
component was conducted in two tiers. The first aspect focussed on the
training of young Pakistanis from various parts of the country in familiarizing
them with the dynamics of South Asian security. The second aspect dealt
with asserting ordinary Pakistanis’ perceptions about security issues
facing the country. Along with young analysts, we held public focus group
discussions with various strata of the society to gauge perceptions about
national security.
c. Contribution of Pakistani women’s movement to the peace movement
SDPI
is undertaking research on the contribution of and the linkages between
the Pakistani women’s movement and the peace movement. The purpose
is to highlight and acknowledge women’s contribution to peace in
the region. We would like to analyse factors that encourage as well as
prevent women and women’s organisations from actively participating
in the public arena on the issue of peace. In addition, we would like
to examine the relationship between the women’s’ movement
and the peace movement in terms of their points of convergence and divergence.
d.
Narrative of Anti-Nuclear Resistance in Pakistan: A Personal Perspective
This component on "Narrative of Anti-Nuclear Resistance in Pakistan"
aims to record the response of civil society groups to nuclear detonations
in 1998. It particularly focusses on peace groups in Islamabad, Lahore
and Karachi. The narrative will be written in a personal perspective based
on interviews and archival search. It will contribute to the small body
of literature on alternative security perspective in Pakistan. It may
also give impetus to other peace groups in the region to come up with
similar publications in their respective countries.
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