Dawn.com: WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s Shad Begum was among 10 of the world’s leading women activists the United States honoured on Thursday for their efforts to improve the lives of other women.
Shad Begum of Lower Dir district, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, received the 2012 International Women of Courage Award, at a ceremony in Washington, for working for women in a deeply conservative area. The region was run briefly by the militants before the Pakistan Army cleared it in May 2009.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama presented the awards.
Secretary Clinton noted that all 10 women had worked tirelessly to improve the lives of women and girls, sometimes at great personal risks.
Some of them were also imprisoned and abused for their efforts, she noted.
Mrs Obama noted that these courageous women refused to accept the status quote, and instead chose to remake the world “as they know it should be”. Ambassador Sherry Rehman, who also attended the ceremony, said Pakistan’s democratic government had enacted a series of legislative measures to protect and advance women’s rights.
“We passed legislation criminalising sexual harassment in the workplace. We passed legislation making it mandatory to appoint neutral mediators at all levels to adjudicate charges of sexual discrimination,” she said.
“Another revolutionary legislation made it illegal to deprive a woman of her rightful inheritance, made it illegal to force a woman into marriage to settle a civil or criminal dispute; and banned compelling or arranging or facilitating a woman’s marriage to the Holy Quran.”
Categories: Americas, Human values, Pakistan, United States, Women Rights
…and you (Pakistani government)passed legislation to deprive minorities their right and freedom of worship and association…May God help us.