The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Friday unveiled its fact-finding report titled ‘Northern Sindh: In Search of Solutions’ highlighting grave human rights violations such as honour killings, forced conversions and bonded labour in the northern region of Sindh.
A fact-finding mission of the HRCP visited Ghotki, Mirpur Mathelo, Kandhkot, Jacobabad, Larkana and Karachi in February this year and found that poor conviction rates in gender-based violence cases were exacerbated by a dearth of shelters for survivors.
The commission also found religious minorities in northern Sindh vulnerable to deep-seated discrimination, arbitrary blasphemy accusations and forced conversions.
“Alarming rates of organised crime, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and exploitative feudal power systems prevailed amid a stark lack of good governance and accountability, particularly in the katcha areas,” the report reads.
It further highlights that tribal feuds especially played a significant role in the region’s conflict dynamics, paralysing socio-economic development. Kidnappings of women and girls were also a result of escalated tribal clashes.
The mission noted that an imbalance in resource allocation had led to limited access to good education and health facilities. Moreover, while censorship of coverage on human rights issues continued unabated, journalists also allegedly faced harassment by law enforcement personnel through fabricated FIRs to suppress press freedom. The report also expresses concerns related to rehabilitation of flood victims as well as long-term climate sustainability measures.
The HRCP has recommended establishing an overarching women’s protection system with shelters in every district, and monitoring issues related to religious minorities for immediate redress of their grievances.
The commission noted that the state must set up accessible and affordable health and education facilities for the people of northern Sindh, and take measures to curb extrajudicial killings with special capacity-building workshops for the police.
It recommended a dedicated police unit to tackle organised crime and abductions, particularly in the katcha areas.
The HRCP also asked the Sindh Commission for Human Rights to keep track of enforced disappearances in the region and become a party to all inquiries put before any forum in this regard.
Given the devastating impact of the 2022 floods in the northern Sindh, the state must also work towards complete rehabilitation of the flood victims and devise long-term sustainable climate solutions, reads the report.
Addressing the fact-finding launching report, HRCP Council Member Sadia Baloch said there was a dearth of accessible and safe shelter homes for victims of domestic violence. The shelters, which fall under the domain of the Sindh women development department, were dysfunctional and understaffed, she added.
She said that the women residing in such shelters faced a lack of medical care and legal assistance due to limited financial resources. They also experienced constrictive living conditions due to a lack of rooms and high-handed behaviour from the management and staff who were frequently left untrained.
Sadia also highlighted that women in northern Sindh continued to face insurmountable barriers to quality education, such as a lack of female-only educational institutes.
The HRCP team received alarming reports of gender-based violence crimes—including physical and sexual assault, abductions, premature burials and murders — a majority of which went unpublicised and underreported.
HRCP Co-Chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt said the mission observed an acute impact on young girls of minority communities as a consequence of their vulnerability to forced conversions.
To bypass the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013, girls from minority communities were subjected to trafficking from Sindh to Punjab, where the legal age to wed remained 16 for girls, he added.
Butt said the unemployment rates among religious minorities remained starkly high and were indicative of the government’s failure to mainstream them into the workforce.
Sindh had reserved a five per cent job quota for religious minorities, but its implementation remained weak and inadequate, he said, adding that across the 500 inhabitants of Meghwar Colony, there was a sparse enrolment of only four men through the minorities’ quota while the political representation of minorities remained minimal.
Speaking on the occasion, academic Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan said the HRCP mission had also noted frequent curbs on freedom of press in northern Sindh, including fatal attacks on journalists, mala fide FIRs and tactics of intimidation to suppress dissent.
Police allegedly attempted to deter press coverage by threatening and brutalising journalists, he said, adding that local journalists also faced pressure from tribal chiefs and criminals, and had no safety.
