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UB professor documents efforts to stop
violence against Pakistani women
Filomena Critelli (left) and Bina Ahmed, a research assistant in the School of Social Work, flank Victoria Bhajhan of the Dastak Charitable Trust.
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“A small but vibrant women’s movement continues today, yet the voices of women and human rights activists are largely unheard.”
A UB faculty member has experienced firsthand the extreme persecution some Pakistani women face every day: She witnessed a woman being smuggled out of a heavily guarded building, her identity hidden to prevent future violence against her, all because she wished to divorce her abusive husband.
Filomena Critelli, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, traveled to the city of Lahore, in the Punjab Province of Pakistan, to observe and document the struggle for rights faced by the women of the area. The results of her research have been compiled in her new paper, “Challenging Gender Violence in Pakistan: Struggle and Hope.”
“Women’s organizations have been operating since [Pakistan] was founded in 1947,” says Critelli. And although the women of Pakistan have been battling for the same basic human rights afforded men for decades now, progress is slow.
“A small but vibrant women’s movement continues today, yet the voices of women and human rights activists are largely unheard.”
Critelli conducted the majority of her research at the headquarters of Dastak Charitable Trust, a secular Pakistani women’s shelter in Lahore whose names translates to “knock on the door.”
“The name implies that all women are welcome. Just knock and come in,” explains Critelli.
Dastak provides a rare safe haven in Pakistan for victims of gender abuse: women escaping the violence of their families because they decide to get a divorce, or who wished to marry someone their family did not agree to, or who refused an arranged marriage. The shelter is associated with AGHS Legal Aid, a practice specializing in women’s rights.
Dastak offers these women shelter, legal assistance, counseling, skills training, education about legal and reproductive rights, parenting assistance, and social and cultural activities. It also will assist these women in resettling independently if they chose. The organization also runs an on-site school for children who accompany their mothers to the shelter.
Critelli made three trips to Lahore, each lasting between one and two months. She met and interviewed the staff of nine women who work at Dastak and at AGHS, witnessing daily their efforts to secure the rights of Pakistani women. She also followed the struggle of 20 different women seeking help from Dastak.
While Pakistan’s government recently has shifted its view of women’s rights groups from being subversive organizations bent on undermining society toward a more ambivalent stance, it remains reluctant to implement Dastak’s shelter model. The state-run women’s shelters are operated more like prisons than support services, not allowing the women to come and go freely. Dastak, which is based on a human-rights framework, offers a source of help for these oppressed women without ostracizing them.
Dastak still faces intense resistance from some militant Islamic groups that claim the women who run the group have been Westernized by American and European influences.
“The debate (of being Westernized) is just completely a non-issue. We’re just women from Pakistan trying to defend our rights,” says Shah Taj Quizilbash, a 70-year-old Pakistani who is one of the founders of Dastak and serves as director of the group’s paralegal program.
Critelli agrees with Quizilbash’s sentiment.
“I don’t believe in a binary East and West approach to human rights,” Critelli says. “Feminist action takes place in a local context.”
Critelli does not want to perpetuate the skewed post-9-11 view of Pakistan as a nation of “fundamentalists and veiled women,” and points out that such factors as class and religion create a considerable diversity in the status of the nation’s women. She does, however, admit that some archaic cultural traditions, particularly those practiced in the more rural areas of the country, present hurdles that will have to be cleared before women there achieve basic human rights. And the road to securing those rights is far from safe.
Armed guards now patrol the entrance of Dastak and the law office, following the 1999 shooting of Samia Sarwar, who, against her parent’s wishes, sought a divorce from her abusive husband. Sarwar’s mother had asked to see her daughter at Dastak’s offices, claiming that the family had finally accepted the divorce and wished to reconcile. Sarwar’s mother arrived at the law offices with a man Sarwar did not recognize, claiming she needed his assistance to walk due to a leg injury. Upon entering the offices, the unidentified man pulled out a gun, fatally shot Sarwar and then fled, taking Shah Taj Quizilbash with him as a hostage for several hours before releasing her unharmed.
Sarwar’s father was a well-known businessman and head of the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce, which increased public awareness of the incident, and highlighted the lack of police action or legal repercussions regarding her murder. While no one was ever prosecuted for Sarwar’s death, a campaign was launched shortly after to ban and prosecute “honor killings.” Laws were passed to that effect in 2004, although Critelli feels they are weak and poorly enforced.
Critelli experienced for herself how dangerous Dastak’s work could be during one of her visits. After seeing a large group of her male relatives gathered in the street outside the offices, a woman seeking assistance from Dastak had to be snuck out of the building—her identity disguised under a large shawl—and hidden on the floor of a van before being driven to safety. The danger to these women is very real, Critelli sayd, noting that employees of Dastak receive death threats on a regular basis.
While there are doubtless decades of struggle ahead before the women of Pakistan have secured the rights they so desperately deserve, Critelli seeks to support these activists in gaining awareness for their cause. She will contribute a chapter, “A World Beyond the Veil: Pursuing Gender Equality in Pakistan,” to a book featuring contributors from around the world titled “Women, Gender, Religion and Education.”
Critelli hopes to bring further attention to the struggle of Pakistani women. She recently received an award from the Faculty Internationalization Fund, administered by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Education, to allow her to travel to Brazil to enhance her course on international social work.
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