Abstract

The theme of this special collection of papers, the lived experiences of women who belong to religious minorities, has been a blind spot both in international development policy engagement and in much of the international scholarship on women, security and peace. Women who belong to religious minorities, who are socioeconomically excluded and are vulnerable to multiple sources of gender-based violence in Pakistan seem to have fallen through the cracks of the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda. The aim of this volume is to shed light on the day-to-day experiences of women and their families who belong to the Ahmadiyya, Christian, Hindu and Hazara Shia religious minorities in Pakistan. Each of the papers in this collection exposes the complexity of the intersections of gender, class and religious marginality in shaping the realities for women from these religious minorities.

Highlights

  • 1.1 Background Pakistan’s constitution promises fundamental rights, correspondence of equal opportunity, law, social, economic, and political justice, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to the law and public morality of its citizens

  • Sunni Hazara women and girls have not been included in this research for the following reasons: (a) they have assimilated into Sunni populations, live in their neighbourhoods, and are considered a part of the Sunni majority population because of their shared sectarian identity; (b) they do not face additional discrimination for their ethnic or sectarian identity, though they constitute the lower middle class and have huge economic challenges; and (c) though they have the same Mongolian facial features and can be identified physically as Hazaras, they have not been a target of terrorist attacks in Balochistan

  • Amidst the media coverage of violence against Hazaras, the marginalisation of Shia Hazara women became invisible in the news and academic scholarships covering the community

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Summary

Introduction

1.1 Background Pakistan’s constitution promises fundamental rights, correspondence of equal opportunity, law, social, economic, and political justice, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to the law and public morality of its citizens. Pakistan is party to several international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) These treaties prohibit any form of discrimination, including on the basis of gender and religion or belief. ‘Engineering’ of the riots started in 1949 by different religious parties with the support of some political leaders who opposed the Pakistan movement and felt disgraced and powerless after Pakistan came into existence (Khan 2018) They manoeuvred the religious sentiments of the general public by targeting a sect of Muslims whose beliefs had been criticised in the past by other sects of Islam. The said riots were a trend setter for future violence against the AMC

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