Women’s Rights Under Siege: A Spotlight on Recent Human Rights Violations and Political Imprisonment in Pakistan

Abstract

The study explores Pakistan's challenges in women's rights and political incarceration, highlighting political bias, delayed justice, legal interference, violence, discrimination, human rights abuses, and women's repression. It calls for a robust criminal justice system and a more transparent judiciary to promote an egalitarian society. The research includes interviews with women, human rights defenders, legal experts, and civil society representatives, as well as qualitative and quantitative analyses of women's rights violations. The study reveals severe human rights abuses against women in Pakistan, including arbitrary detentions, torture, sexual violence, and denial of due process. To address these issues, it recommends new legislation, strengthening institutional capacity, improving monitoring mechanisms, establishing accountability procedures, seeking international assistance, ensuring fair treatment for female political prisoners, and empowering female human rights advocates. This study is significant in the urgent need to address and mitigate the escalating human rights violations and political imprisonment targeting women in Pakistan, aiming to inform and influence global efforts towards gender equality and justice. It identifies factors like patriarchal norms, weak institutions, ignorance, corruption, economic conditions, global conspiracies, and ineffective criminal justice as root causes. The paper calls for sustained activism to hold the Pakistani government accountable and support grassroots movements.