Chairperson HRCP calls for proper implementation of acid burn, domestic laws in country

ISLAMABAD, Nov 2 (APP):Chairperson Human Rights Commission Pakistan Nasreen Azhar Saturday recommended that country needs stronger laws, more healthcare facilities, and more social support to eradicate acid violence from society and help survivors healing physically and psychologically.

In her exclusive interview with APP, she said as cases of acid burning attacks dropped over the past three years but we still needed to open more acid burning units at all rural areas of the country for the facilitation of female burn victims.

The figure complied by HRCP the acid burnt women have dropped by 40 to 50% percent as compared to past incidents, she added.

Punjab is the center of acid-related violence with 80 to 85% of the attacks followed by Sindh, KP, Balochistan, Islamabad, and Kashmir, she highlighted.

Previous governments in Punjab kept promising to legislate on the matter, but no progress was made, she hoped that present government would implement the bill and would take it seriously.
She said HRCP is doing its sincere efforts and providing free of cost legal assistance to all victims and launching different mass awareness drives through its platforms to sensitize public on this issue.

Nasreen said the public conversation must turn to ‘our ability to protect the vulnerable and the discriminated segment of society,’ adding that ‘the rights agenda has to be reset, and it must be reset for Parliament and by Parliament’ through ‘coalitions for rights-based legislation.’

She said it is crucial to bring greater visibility to human rights issues in Pakistan, including that of empowering the more vulnerable sections of the population, and projecting them as a priority for the present government to tackle these issues with proper implementation of laws.

She further emphasized on the need to stop continues domestic violence in different cities of the country as women violence law was introduced in past but there is need for its proper implementation.

She regretted that unreported cases of stove burnings which were in many instances an attempt to murder or injure women, continued to be reported, with estimates suggesting hundreds of women fell victim to burnings each year.

She said that an approximately 65 percent cases of acid burning victims were women and girls and 15 percent were children and 80 percent of the survivors earn less than Rs8,000 per month.

She also appealed to the PTI-led government to dismiss those police officers who do not have the courage to arrest the rich people and always discouraged the female in their police stations with using abusive languages when they visited for registering an FIR against the culprits.