Daily Times

Though domestic violence is an incredibly pervasive human rights concern all over the world, occurrences of the phenomenon are on the rise in Pakistan. Back in November 2017, the Georgetown Institute’s Women, Peace and Security Index ranked Pakistan the fourth worst country for women out of 153 countries. A report revealed that the overall prevalence of domestic violence in Pakistan ranges between 21 percent and 50 percent. This means that every second woman in the country suffers from some form of domestic violence, showing it is a problem of endemic proportions. Despite the harrowing situation, the state appears to have done little to stamp out this issue.

On March, 24, Asma Aziz was allegedly tortured cruelly and shamelessly by her husband Mian Faisal and his employees in Lahore’s Defense Housing Authority. According to a statement in the FIR that Asma Aziz got registered at the Kahna police station on March, 27, “Six months after my marriage in 2015, my husband has been quarreling, torturing and forcing me to dance before him and his friends. On March 24 at 2am, over my refusal to dance for them, my husband started to beat me with an iron pipe and cut my hair, injuring me severely after he and employees bound me to a pipe in our house.”

On the same day, another horrifying incident of domestic violence had surfaced in Sahiwal, Punjab. A woman had been tied with chains and allegedly tortured by her husband in their house in the Sheeran Wali Gali neighbourhood for at least 20 days. The Galla Mandi police reported that she was chained up and beat regularly brutally on the pretext that she was being possessed by demons.

The fact is that reporting is the first step towards ending the silence around domestic violence. It is also an act of resistance and counts as the exertion of female agency

To recognise domestic violence as a criminal offence, protect victims from it and punish perpetrators of the crime, Sindh in 2013, Balochistan in 2014 and Punjab in 2015 had enacted laws. Despite the legislative development, the violence still continues to affect thousands of women in the country badly every day and it often goes unpunished. This shows that only enacting laws is not sufficient. If we want women in Pakistan to live free of the violence, we will have to purge our society of this public menace by implementing the related laws effectively

Domestic violence occurs when one partner wants to maintain a system of power and control over the other. In Pakistan, men have been wielding this coercive control over their wives in order to get their obedience unquestionably. The fact is that the use of violence is a knee-jerk reaction of a deep-seated notion of fear. When a man becomes suspicious that his wife has become independent and he has lost his influence over her, he adopts aggressive behavior with her to regain his lost control and authority.

Despite the fact that domestic violence has an extremely damaging effect on women’s physical, mental and psychological well-being, women in Pakistan have been subjected to various forms of violence brutally and maliciously simply because they have low educational level, least political participation and low economic status. Besides, unjust dowry system, domination of patriarchal social order and male superiority beliefs are the other significant factors responsible for the prevalence of the scourge epidemically in the society.

The fact is that reporting is the first step towards ending the silence around domestic violence. It is also an act of resistance and counts as the exertion of female agency. In Pakistan, unlike Asma Aziz, a great majority of women do not report domestic violence at all nor do they seek help from anybody, including the authorised institutions. They believe that reporting is not without its threats, including lack of acceptance by families, end of a relationship with a partner, isolation from children, humiliation by police, lack of satisfactory resolution, and retaliatory intensification of violence.

In this grave situation, the victims need the provision of integrated supportive services, legal intervention and redress to rebuild and recover their lives. To make women’s life free of domestic violence, there is a need to eliminate this scourge. A robust system of implementation of related laws should be developed to ensure that violence will not go unpunished. Besides, the federal and provincial governments in collaboration with national and international humanitarian organizations like WHO, UNESCO and USAID should come up with women welfare and development initiatives and programmes to empower them in social, political, economic and cultural spheres.