Reimagining Justice: Aurat March

Manifesto 2022
How is the current system inadequate/‫ہمارے زخم‬ 2
Excessive focus on punishment to combat crime & injustice 2
Why Death Penalty Fails Us 3
Justice system does not serve gender minorities 4
Economic and Environmental issues 5

Our Feminist Imagination 6

Feminist Justice 6
Feminist Economic and Environmental Justice 8

Demands from the state 9

Demands from society 12

Over the past year, like the yeaers before it, we were exposed to violence: violence in the form
of the pandemic, violence due to state policies and negligence, violence at home and violence
in the streets. On the other hand, current forms of justice, which centre around courts and
police, are failing us. Our existing legal system aims to treat everyone as equal while ignoring
differences of power, and is unable to actually make litigating parties equal. We have seen in
countless cases, such as Shahrukh Jatoi’s, Usman Mirza’s and Ali Zafar’s, that powerful
accused parties exercise great influence outside court. This year, we strive to reimagine justice
on our own terms, taking account of these power differentials and outside of the predetermined
script written for us.

In order to reimagine justice, we need to popularize and institutionalize a feminist culture of care
that looks beyond the individual to address structural violence. We must invest in
community-driven reform that privileges and provides adequate resources to care for both the
individual and communities, while providing accountability for harmful behaviour. This exercise
in reimagining is necessary because in our five years of organizing we have come to the
conclusion that women, trans, khawja sira and non-binary individuals have no confidence in the
legal system’s ability to provide emancipation. Even though we will fight for justice within the
court, we reject it as the sole mechanism of accountability and closure for victims. The young
generation of feminists is looking for alternative feminist futures.

Reimagining justice is a difficult process, especially for many of us who have experienced
patriarchal violence. However, we strive to do the difficult work of reimagining, confronting
contradictions and feeling the pain of our wounds when healing. We take on this work and we
will do it collectively. We will continue to ask uncomfortable questions of the state, society, and
ourselves. This is what we have done for the past five years, and what we will continue to do.
Lastly, we must integrate love into our practice; start to love as a political act. Love is necessary
for hope and for the courage required to not limit ourselves to reactionary outrage. The last five
years of Aurat March have been about an expression of anger, joy and community in the face of
immense backlash and hatred. We can dismantle through anger and outrage, but the process of
rebuilding requires care and love.

How is the current system inadequate/‫ہمارے زخم‬

● Excessive focus on punishment to combat crime & injustice

○ To demonstrate that they are tough on crime, states allocate resources to
policing, surveillance, incarceration or public spectacles of punishment instead of
education, community building and social welfare. This does not address the
causes of violence at all. In 1947, only two crimes, murder and treason, were
punishable with death. Today, over thirty offences are punishable by death, but
we are no more safer.
○ Pakistan’s corrupt and dysfunctional prison system is a painful and urgent
reminder of the limitations of a system relying heavily on prisons. The national
overcrowding rate in Pakistan’s prisons is 136.1% (2021)1, with a large majority
comprising prisoners awaiting or on trial (62.1% acc to 2019 data).2 Given weak
accountability mechanisms for wardens and dehumanization of criminals, torture
and other brutal treatment are rarely checked.
○ Focusing on punishment solely is short-sighted and makes violence a crime of
individuals, without taking stock of the social, economic and political factors that
drive it. Moreover, it does not give the harm-doer the opportunity to take account
of the wrong they have done. Incarceration into overcrowded prisons with
inhumane conditions and lacking basic sanitation isolates people from the human
impact of their actions. Prisons are not reforming people, rather further alienating
them.
○ Imprisonment adds fuel to an already raging fire since incarceration impacts
entire generations of families. Families lose breadwinners, forced to spend
money on prison visits and legal fees, and in turn have to organise their lives
around these visits, losing school and working days. In this way, the punishment
for a crime that may have been committed due to socioeconomic factors, forces
the family into a cycle of repeating patterns.
○ This narrow imagination of justice depends on a system that has been historically
discriminatory towards marginalised and oppressed communities. Poorer,
migrant or ethnic minority men are more likely to find themselves reprimanded by

1
“World Prison Brief,” ICPR, https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/pakistan/.
2
“Reforming Pakistan’s Prison System,” National Crisis Group,
https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/pakistan/reforming-pakistan-s-prison-system.
 the law,3 while lacking the resources and knowledge to have a fair chance at
effectively fighting their case.
○ Carceral justice rarely holds the state accountable for violence. Families of those
“forcibly disappeared” cannot turn to the very state that has enacted violence on
them. Courts, and more recently lawmakers, have tried to ensure accountability
for crimes of the state only to find that the answers within the current system are
missing.4

○ Why Death Penalty Fails Us

■ Pakistan’s death row population is the largest in the world5, and after
every major incident of violence, there are widespread demands of public
hanging, castration, life imprisonment and torture from the public as well
as politicians. In our popular discourse, the death penalty is seen as a
deterrent to violent crime, however, experience and extensive studies
show us that there is no correlation between crime reduction and the
death penalty.6 There is extensive data available that suggests that the
vast majority of people who have been hanged in Pakistan are juveniles,
mentally ill, extremely poor or those later found to be innocent.7
■ Without addressing the underlying causes behind crime, state-sanctioned
violence is not an effective long-term solution. Using dehumanising
language for perpetrators, labelling them “monsters” and “animals”
deserving of death, only services to individualize crime and violence as a
result of an individual’s pathology, rather than outcomes of complex social
drivers like inequity, historical lack of opportunities, gender stereotypes
and expectations, poverty and isolation.

3
Criminalising of harassment under Section 509 of the Pakistan Penal Code, for instance, presents a
narrow imagination of harassment as exclusively occuring in public spaces and disproportionately
implicates working class men who are more likely to be found in public spaces.
4
“Human Rights Minister Dr Shireen Mazari revealed on Monday that a bill pertaining to enforced
disappearances, which was recently passed by the National Assembly (NA), had gone "missing".”
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1667443.
5
“Death row population in Pakistan,” Justice Project Pakistan, https://data.jpp.org.pk/page/9pa1cdfd4u.
6
Numerous studies have down the lack of deterrance from capital punishment:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/act510022013en.pdf
7
Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) in its Follow-up Report to the ICCPR 120th Session of Human Rights
Committee in September 2019 noted that: “Mercy petitions have been consistently denied since Dec.
2014, even for cases with strong evidence of humanitarian abuses and violations, such as persons
sentenced to death as juvenile offenders (Iqbal, Anwar, Azam), those with severe physical disabilities
(Abdul Basit) and those who are severely mentally ill (Imdad Ali, Kanizan Bibi, and Ghulam Abbas.”
Source:
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/PAK/INT_CCPR_NGS_PAK_37168_E.
pdf
 ● Justice system does not serve gender minorities
○ In this biased justice system, women, khwaja sira and non-binary folks face
problems at every step:
■ The infamous “thana culture” keeps survivors hesitant to contact the
police. Many times, women, khwaja sira and trans folks who report crimes
are blatantly dismissed,8 silenced or forced to reconcile.9 Courts also
continue to accept compromises despite the fact that rape cannot be
compromised under the laws of Pakistan.10 Cases of abuse and
harassment of survivors who sought police assistance have also been
reported frequently.11
■ Police interventions in cases of patriarchal violence are inadequate at
best, and violent and traumatising as a norm. Trans and khawaja sira are
routinely harassed and brutalised by the police. To paraphrase the
common adage, you are violated twice, once by the abuser and then by
the system. Trans bodies, in particular, are seen as sexual objects and
their cases are systematically taken less seriously. Instead, they are at
risk of sexual violence by the police themselves.
■ Most court cases involving women, khwaja sira, trans and gender
non-conforming people come down to a judgement of their moral
character.12 13
■ Women are also more likely to be stigmatised due to their association to
criminal cases. The culture of “ek chup sau sukh” teaches survivors of
patriarchal violence to internalise abuse to preserve relationships and
avoid becoming social pariahs.
■ The justice system on the whole is skewed against survivors, with
women, khwaja sira and trans folks being largely absent from court

8
We remember the police’s indifference in Farishta’s case. “Farishta: Outrage over Pakistan child murder,”
BBC, May 22, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48364434.
9
According to the Punjab public prosecutor’s office, the conviction of crime of sexual violence has
remained extremely low with 96% of the criminals getting acquittals in the most horrific of crimes. Fearful
of the adverse consequences, many women don't even report these crimes.
10
For example, 2012 YLR 2701 Abdul Waheed v Mst. Dai.
11
“Rape Allegations Against Pakistan’s Police,” Human Rights Watch,
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/23/rape-allegations-against-pakistans-police. See examples, Geo
News, “Alleged Rape in Civil Judge’s Chambers”, (24 January 2020,
https://www.geo.tv/latest/268919-alleged-rape-in-civil-judges-chamber-sehwan-magistrate-to-undergo-me
dical-tests).
“Pakistan: Police official allegedly raped woman who called him to complain against harassment,”
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-police-official-allegedly-raped-woman-who-called-him-t
o-complain-against-harassment-1.1600784320377.
12
We have seen this most recently in the murder case of Noor Mukaddam where defense counsel
thought it relevant to question the victim’s father about the character of his murdered daughter.
13
The conception of the “perfect victim” is used as a tool to discredit anyone who doesn’t conform to that
archetype. Following the termination of marriage, a woman can be expected to go through years of court
battles, subjecting her character and privacy to an adversarial forum that would not only be public, but
also expensive, and traumatising. It is therefore not surprising that women are reluctant to go through the
“due process”.
 rooms.14 These unbalanced numbers fail to provide support structures for
women and children to rely on, which makes the process of going to court
extremely hostile and unsafe as we have seen in the recent incidents of
lawyers beating up of a woman in court in Malir Cantt, Karachi and the
rape of a woman in a judge’s chamber in Sindh, or the alleged use of
sexual violence by police against two Christian men in 2018. Even when
women are integrated into the machinery of the court, individuals can
hardly make a dent in the deeply embedded structural patriarchy of the
justice system.

● Economic and Environmental issues

○ Economies in the Global South, such as Pakistan, have become primary
destinations for dumping metal wasting, plastics,15 discarded clothing, and
electronic waste, or e-waste from across the world in the form of “second-hand
equipment”.16 We recognise this is part of a larger colonial relationship where
“more developed” economies continue to dispose of waste to the “rest of the
world”.
○ Pakistan’s cities are some of the most polluted in terms of air quality. The smog
levels are causing an unprecedented incidence of respiratory issues that are
literally choking us. Studies show that residents in Lahore could gain an average
of 4 years to their lifespans if air quality is improved.17 This is a class and
distributive justice issue as much as it is an environmental one, increasing
health costs and residents who cannot afford air purifiers or shelter inside
spacious homes are forced to breathe in toxic air.
○ Climate change has created a food security crisis.18 Food insecurity is a
feminist issue. Patriarchal family structures and gender discrimination means that
women are more likely to suffer from malnutrition and lack of access to food.
Food insecurity is disproportionately high in Balochistan, with 30% of the
province’s population reporting food insecurity.19 For an agriculture-based

14
In 2020 it was reported that only 6 out of 113 judges of high courts across the country are women; and
out of 198 members of 7 bar councils across the country, only 6 were women.
Feminisation of law and judiciary in Pakistan,
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2263846/feminisation-of-law-and-judiciary-in-pakistan.
15
16
According to the WHO, Pakistan produced 433 kilotons of e-waste in 2020. Pakistan currently has no
plan or policy on disposing of or recycling such waste which has major health implications.
“E-waste poses health threat to Pakistanis, says UN study,” Dawn, https://www.dawn.com/news/1629612.
17
“AQLI: Pakistan Fact Sheet,”
https://aqli.epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/PakistanFactSheet_2021.pdf.
18
As per the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement, 16.4 out of every 100 households
surveyed during 2019-2020 reported moderate to severe food insecurity.
“Pakistan Social And Living Standards Measurement,”
https://www.pbs.gov.pk/content/pakistan-social-and-living-standards-measurement.
19
“Food insecurity,” Dawn, https://www.dawn.com/news/1626141/food-insecurity.
 economy such as Pakistan, employing 67% of the women who work,20 climate
change will be devastating to people’s livelihoods.
○ We are in the midst of an economic crisis underpinned by a crisis of capitalism,
indifference and patriarchy. The current government has capitulated to the
demands of the IMF, throwing the people of this country to fend for themselves in
the face of historic and crippling inflation. The austerity measures stemming
from this crisis have created a cyclical crisis of care, where social and welfare
services, which women are more likely to avail, are scaled back at a time when
people need it the most.
○ The gender pay gap in Pakistan is quite high with women on average earning
34% less than men.21 Additionally, women account for 90% of the bottom 1% of
wage earners in Pakistan.22 There is a serious lack of basic facilities at
workplaces to make it conducive for women. Many workplaces even lack a
separate toilet facility. There are hardly any provisions for childcare or transport
by employers which make it difficult for women to take up employment.
○ Women are much more likely to be employed in precarious jobs in the informal
sector. According to the Pakistan Labour Force Survey (2014-15), out of the total
women employed in the non-agriculture sector, 74% of them are employed in the
informal sector. This means that women are much more likely to lack access to
legal protections, worker rights and benefits.
○ Within the patriarchal family structure, the distribution of power is heavily skewed
against women. Financial abuse in the family, which is common in Pakistan,
prevents women from acquiring, maintaining and using financial resources and
are unable to make any independent economic decisions.

Our Feminist Imagination

Feminist Justice
We resist attempts to hijack alternative visions of justice that perpetuate patriarchal structures
in the form of jirgas and panchayats. As Pakistani feminists, we recognize the violent history of
community-based justice that punishes women, reproducing patriarchal visions of honour and
morality. Viable alternate systems cannot be exclusionary, nor function to cement power. Our
attempt to reimagine justice seeks to take back the monopoly of patriarchs over alternate justice
systems–we will define for ourselves the meaning of true justice.

20
“PAKISTAN OVERVIEW OF FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION - 201,” World Food Program,
https://www.wfp.org/publications/pakistan-overview-food-security-and-nutrition-2019
21
Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies behind Gender Pay Gap.
https://www.ilo.org/islamabad/info/public/pr/WCMS_651658/lang--en/index.htm
22
Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies behind Gender Pay Gap.
https://www.ilo.org/islamabad/info/public/pr/WCMS_651658/lang--en/index.htm
We strive to develop strategies that address both state and interpersonal violence,
particularly violence against women from marginalized ethnicities and the khwaja sira
community. By centering these marginalized experiences we understand that addressing state
violence should not be disconnected from addressing domestic and sexual violence. For many
of us–families of those forcibly disappeared and trans men and women–the state is rarely a
place to turn to for protection–it is the site of violence.

Notions of care need to be decoupled from stereotypical understandings as feminine, which

seeks to relegate it to the private realm and unpaid labour performed by women within the
family structure. A culture of care can only be built if everyone participates in it. Care and safety
need to be seen as a collective responsibility, rather than individualistic visions of self-help
and self-defence, it needs to be centred on community and collective responsibility.

We firmly believe that communities are avenues for prevention, intervention, and
transformation, spaces where interventions can be imagined and implemented.23 While
we usually think of the person doing harm as the one accountable for violence,24 community
accountability means that communities also hold themselves accountable for ignoring
and perpetuating violence. This can be done by becoming more knowledgeable, better
equipped and willing to take action to intervene in violence and to support social norms and
conditions that prevent violence from happening in the first place.

We must also recognize the humanity of first responders to violence. We call for adequate
care for the first responders i.e. police, EMT, lawyers, welfare workers, who are key in giving
immediate care to the victim. They, too, are affected as consistent spectators of trauma and
should be given timely and cost-effective access to support systems.

We recognise that not every abuser can reform, but believe that providing an environment that
facilitates such transformation is a collective responsibility. We firmly believe that the survivor
is never obligated to facilitate such potential reform, nor should their needs and safety be
superseded at any step. The justice we are imagining does not require the survivor to show
accountability-driven compassion towards their harm-doer, even if they have reformed–it
demands that attitude from society and state institutions. Validating the hurt and needs of the
survivor and creating an environment that cultivates change within the harm-doer should not be
a binary. Intersectionality should function as a bridge to accountability, responsive to the
differing needs of every survivor within the bounds of human rights and human dignity.

We invite society to imagine justice beyond punitive and retributive justice–justice must be about
healing. Carceral justice can hold a limited cathartic value for some survivors; we must ask
ourselves what tools and resources all survivors need in order to truly heal from the violence
enacted on them?

23
Mimi E. Kim (2018) From carceral feminism to transformative justice: Women-of-color feminism and
alternatives to incarceration, Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 27:3, 219-233, DOI:
10.1080/15313204.2018.1474827.
24
Accountability is the ability to recognize and take responsibility for the violence.
Feminist Economic and Environmental Justice
We consider feminist economic justice a political project that seeks to uncover the inequalities
produced by the economy and advocate for transformations that lead to decent living for
all. We wish to move beyond traditional models of “economic success” that focus exclusively on
monetary success. The quest for monetary success ignores the unpaid labour of childcare,
housework and elderly care that is done disproportionately by women. Rather, we advocate
using human well-being as a primary marker of economic success.

We reject solutions that “individualise” the economic problems faced by women. By

focusing on how women can achieve economic success by changing their individual behaviour,
these solutions obscure the structural problems faced by women and reproduce the exploitative
capitalist logic. Feminist concerns can never be divorced from our struggle for economic
inequality, we need to be cognizant of capitalist attempts to co-opt and dilute feminism. Fast
fashion and other industries targeted towards women represent organized attempts to profit
off feminist messaging, while rejecting its principles in their labour and environmental practices.
Such a myopic understanding of the economic problems ignores the structural discrimination
that takes place on the basis of class, ethnicity, race, and disabilities. In our feminist economic
imagination, we recognize the different layers that govern people’s lives and identities and
believe that this intersectional approach is the key to understanding the differentiated access to
resources and power.

Our vision of justice also displaces the human-centric/anthropocentric conceptions of a

just society, expanding justice to encompass the entirety of our world. Environmental justice is
political – it is not limited to merely planting more trees or animal preservation, or using a cloth
bag – environmental justice involves the right to housing, access to land, food sovereignty,
resisting the voracious use of fossil fuels and the right to clean energy, air and water which is
rapidly becoming a luxury in major cities across Pakistan.

Environmental justice in Pakistan is also strongly linked to economic justice - the Global North
having rapaciously built up their industries and economies, responsible for 92% of all
emissions,25 now place the burden of the environment on the Global South. To demand
environmental justice is to challenge the (ill)logic of global capitalism.

We must acknowledge that environmental degradation and climate change disproportionately

impact marginalised communities–farming and fishing communities, women and children–who
are left at the mercy of these violent changes.

In order to stem the climate crisis, which, if unchecked, will lead to economic catastrophe and
unprecedented social and political conflict, we need to reimagine what justice and equity look
25
“Global North Is Responsible for 92% of Excess Emissions,”
https://eos.org/articles/global-north-is-responsible-for-92-of-excess-emissions.
like – we will have to fundamentally change our relationship with nature and shed our
consumer-driven dreams of progress.

Demands from the State

● Survivor-centric welfare systems receive more funding to provide shelter, housing,
healthcare and economic and psycho-social services to survivors of patriarchal violence.
○ We do not accept austerity-based policies which have gutted public health
and welfare institutions. The criminal justice system has serious limitations, and
the state cannot be allowed to absolve its responsibility towards survivors by
simply providing punitive solutions.
○ It is disappointing that the government’s flagship Sehat Card fails to cover mental
health support and services. We cannot expect survivors to heal from trauma of
abuse and violence if we continue to deprioritise mental health.
● Displacement and migration due to the climate crisis be recognised as a public
emergency which is putting immense pressure on resources and resulting in urban
migration. Displaced communities need to be provided housing and accommodation
as a matter of their fundamental rights. Article 38 of the Constitution of Pakistan places
obligations on the state to “provide basic … housing… for all such citizens, irrespective
of sex, caste, creed or race, as are permanently or temporarily unable to earn their
livelihood on account of infirmity, sickness or unemployment”.
○ We explicitly condemn developmental projects such as the Ravi Riverfront Urban
Development Project (RRUDP)26, hailed by Prime Minister Imran Khan, as
fundamentally violent towards the economy and indigenous communities that
farm and sustain these lands.
● We reject policing and surveillance as a solution to reducing patriarchal violence and
increasing protections for women, trans, khwaja sira and non-binary individuals. Policing
structures have historically sought to control, discriminate and contain marginalised
communities. Increasing surveillance cameras, dress codes and curfews are not viable
solutions–we demand safety, not paternalism. We demand the immediate defunding of
“safe city projects”, costing the public billions of Rupees27 and offering an ineffective28

26
Declared unconstitutional by the Lahore High Court, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court, at the
time of this manifesto’s release.
27
Lahore Safe Cities Authority cost of setting up, in 2017: “The total cost of the third revised PC-I is
amounting to Rs14,527.799 million.”
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1541287/safe-cities-authority-cost-rs810m.
Running cost of the Safe Cities Project:
“The finance department has offered quarterly payments of Rs644 million every three months for the safe
city project; however no response has been received from the Home Department regarding the offer.”
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2140488/safe-city-authority-roiled-funding-crunch.
28
Speaking in this regard, Safe City Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer Kamran Khan said
that out of the 8,000 CCTV cameras, over 2,200 are currently out of order. “But we have held
negotiations with a foreign company to not only make the needful repairs but also replace existing
 and one-sided vision of safety, and agitate that those funds be redirected to
survivor-support and welfare programs.
● Hold private and for-profit companies accountable for the damage they have done to
our environment. We will not be placated by stop-gap measures where companies pivot
to “sustainability” models which merely mask extractive and exploitative economic
models. Supply-chains of companies need to be laid bare and wasteful practices
abolished.
○ True accountability means radical transparency and accountability towards
affected communities, transferring power to these communities, giving them the
means – economic, legal and political – to define environmental justice and hold
these companies to account.
● We demand that the government create and invest in environmentally safe mechanisms
to deal with waste and resist waste dumps from other countries. Our land cannot be
used as a dumping ground.
● Right to clean air is fundamental to our right to life.29 We demand immediate and drastic
measures be taken to improve air quality which will require fundamentally altering our
urban landscapes, restructuring public transport and penalising pollution producing
industries.
○ Ignorant statements from our government blaming smog levels on barbecues and
efforts by the Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) to take criminal
action against publishers of data quality show that our government’s sense of
justice doesn’t encompass the residents of this country–human and otherwise.30
● We reject the agro-industrial complex that puts farmers at the mercy of lenders, seed
and fertiliser companies that treat systems of social reproduction as commodities to be
exploited rather than as sustainers of life.
○ Instead, we advocate for the protection of farmland and livelihoods that ensure
fresh, nutritious and affordable food for a growing population. We demand
government facilitation and support of agroecological approaches to farming.
○ This would entail encouraging rather than criminalising seed-saving and storing,
as well as taking away patenting and IP rights to companies like Monsanto,
which have claimed ownership over the very fundamental sources of life.
○ No-tilling farming practises, combined with large-scale use of compost made
with urban wastes from kitchens, restaurants, grocery stores and gardens, and
drawing on both indigenous knowledge as well as scientific research on food
production in a climate changing world, will be essential to cultivating
sustainable food systems.
● Conservation areas and parks to promote tourism must keep in mind the local
population, the natural habitat of the animals and the devastating effects of over-tourism.

batteries for good measure,” Khan added.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2334747/cctv-systems-around-lahore-remain-blind.
29
Article 9 of the Constitution of Pakistan guarentees the right to life: “Security of person: No person
shall be deprived of life or liberty save in accordance with law.”
30
Ali Raza, “Punjab minister wants FIA action against fake air quality data,” Geo News, November 17,
2021, https://www.geo.tv/latest/382556-punjab-minister-wants-fia-action-against-fake-air-quality-data.
 While they may protect species against poaching and areas against overexploitation, it
does little to combat pollution and climate change.31 The planned overexploitation of the
Northern areas of Pakistan as part of the government’s economic recovery plan seeks to
commodify local resources and ensure involuntary participation in a tourism economy
that does little to further redistributive justice.
● Protection of workers in the informal economy: Social protections, such as regulating
working hours, decent pay, working conditions, safety, child care, and protection from
harassment, should be offered to workers in the informal economy.
○ One way of doing this is to work towards formalisation of the informal economy,
however, a more integrated approach would be to expand social protections
beyond the formal sector, and help create organisations of informal workers that
can act as a platform for workers to advocate for their rights and negotiate with
their employers.32
○ Universal basic income should be provided for all residents of Pakistan. This
will ensure everyone, regardless of whether they belong to the formal or informal
sector or engage in paid or unpaid labour, is provided base-level resources as of
right. This will most directly compensate women, who are more likely to perform
unpaid labour.
● Pass comprehensive legislation that deals with pay inequality and protections for
discrimination the basis of gender: Pakistan has one of the lowest female labour force
participation rate, and overall women earn 74% of men’s wages.33 We demand
legislation that specifically addresses gender pay inequalities and gender-related
discriminations at the workplace.
○ Trans and khwaja sira communities are under-represented in the formal economy
due to discrimination and stigmatisation of professions they are associated with.
We demand that current attacks on the Transgender Persons (Protection of
Rights) Act, 2018, which ensured the prohibition against discrimination and
unfair treatment in relation to occupation, trade or employment, be strongly
resisted by the state and proactive action be taken to ensure implementation of
the law.
● Investing in the “care economy” instead of infrastructural work, particularly in times
of economic crisis: Care work, such as caring for the elderly or children, is unpaid and
done almost exclusively by women. By relegating this work to the private, domestic
sphere the state and society abdicate their responsibility to provide care to a majority of
the population. We demand that the state actively invests in child and elderly care and
provides care work income to ease the burden on women.

31
“Protected Areas: the Past, Present, and Future of Conservation,”
https://earth.org/protected-areas-the-past-present-and-future-of-conservation.
32
ILO on the informal economy:
https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/dw4sd/themes/informal-economy/lang--en/index.htm.
33
“Barriers to pay inequality in Pakistan”, ILO,
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---ilo-islamabad/documents/publication/
wcms_554791.pdf.
 ● Increase representation of women in trade unions: Women in Pakistan constitute
less than 2% of trade union members in the formal economy. Because of this, many
gender-specific issues within the economy are not discussed or brought to light.
Unionisation must be a feasible choice for domestic workers, agricultural workers,
workers in the garment industry - in short, professions which disproportionately employ
and exploit women.
● We demand training for all facilitators of justice, like the police, lawyers and judges,
on expanding the definition of domestic violence beyond the physical to financial
and emotional abuse. This re-education is very important because women in abusive
relationships are likely to turn to these actors and they should be provided with
appropriate avenues to seek justice against these structural forms of abuse and
manipulations.
● We demand the immediate decriminalisation of defamation laws, namely sections
499/500 of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 20 of the Prevention of Electronic
Crimes Act, as they are a stark reminder of how the criminal justice system is actively
anti-survivor.

Demands from society

● Repair and reform is a difficult conversation–the sheer prevalence and spectrum of
patriarchal violence requires that we seek to transform behaviours by giving perpetrators
and harm-doers the opportunity to hold themselves accountable and repair the harm
they have done.
○ This work cannot be done by individuals, and certainly not by survivors, it
requires structural support given to communities to reform perpetrators.
○ Perpetrators often lack resources and language to practice self-accountability,
presented with the binary of legal guilt or innocence. There is no room for
reformation–the current justice system helps no one: neither does it provide
meaningful justice to victims, nor does it allow for perpetrators to reckon with the
harm they caused.
○ However, we absolutely reject the idea of blood money (as diyat or arsh, or as
‘compromises’ tacitly recognised by courts) as being survivor-centric. Decades of
experience with illegal compromises, and diyat in court cases such as Shahrukh
Jatoi’s has shown us that these are exploitative of the victim/survivor, and are
exacerbated by our slow and corrupt criminal justice system.
● We want to invest in creating and fostering collective communities of care, building
structures of support already found in our local communities. Ensure that resources are
directed to strengthening local support systems geared towards mutual aid, bystander
intervention and support groups.
○ We envision the role of feminist social movements in creating these communities;
communities that hold themselves accountable and have mechanisms to address
abuse. While we recognise that communities can reproduce patriarchal attitudes
and victim-blaming, pockets of alternative communities have also existed that
 have allowed women, khwaja sira and victims of violence to survive and
sometimes even thrive. We seek to harness the work of communities at the
margins as visions for our feminist futures.
○ Community-based interventions can include public awareness campaigns
through accessible resources and material, changing school curriculum, having
more public discussions so people can learn and unlearn. In order to explore,
experiment with and act in accordance with community-based justice, it is
imperative that communities are granted more agency and autonomy. Localised
groups and local governments are key to embarking on this self-correcting path
of creating community-based solutions to prevalent economic, social and
environmental injustice.
● Immediate reduction of the use of fossil fuels by divesting products and industries
which largely rely on such fuels and investing in renewable energy with Global North
subsiding this lateral shift. The impact of this change on women and marginalised
communities should be taken into account as women are forced to cook with fuels (such
as wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung) and kerosene in the absence of
adequate gas and electricity. We reject any policy that penalises marginalised
communities for their use of traditional fuels, which does not explicitly contain measures
for replacement/alternatives.
● Period Poverty is a prevalent issue in Pakistan due to the existing patriarchal hierarchy.
However, when talking about increasing access to period products, we urge
consideration in using and promoting environmentally safe products.34 Taboos around
periods must be removed so the proper use of products such as menstrual cups and
reusable pads can be discussed openly. This conversation must be intersectional and
inclusive by recognizing the different needs of transgender women, non-binary, intersex
and disabled women. Access to water and sanitation must also be improved so that
usage of better products can be facilitated.
● Acknowledge/value unpaid labour of women as being equally important as “paid”
labour normally performed by men: Unpaid labour by women lies at the heart of the
entire economy. In order for the “paid” economy to work, the unpaid labour of women in
the form of childcare, housework, elder care etc is necessary. This unpaid labour is
evaluated at $10.9 trillion / year35. Measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19
have increased household tasks with more members of the family staying at home, and
much of this burden has fallen unequally on women. However, mainstream economic
discourse does not value or acknowledge this unpaid and unfair division of labour
performed exclusively by women.
● Employers should improve facilities at the workplace to accommodate women:
Women face gender-specific challenges at the workplace which prevents them from
34
Tampons, pads, and panty liners, their packaging, and wrapping generate more than 200,000 metric tons
of waste annually.
“Which Period Products Are Best for the Environment?,”
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/best-period-products-for-the-environment/.
35
“Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/04/opinion/women-unpaid-labor.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=
google1tap
taking up employment. As women are disproportionately responsible for housework and
childcare, workplaces should be required to daycare, paid maternity and paternity leave
facilities for all employees. Basic facilities like separate toilets should be provided at
every workplace.