Break the bias

March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day. Its theme for this year is ‘#BreaktheBias’.

When it comes to treating women and children, the problem of ‘patriarchal dictatorship’ never left our overall culture. It is thriving – surprisingly so – even under the covers of a liberal and progressive mindset.

The idea of social justice, if implemented in true letter and spirit, builds the solid ground for a viable and large-scale civil and criminal justice system. Unfortunately, this never happened, and no government or civil society initiated this ‘change’. It is, however, a proven fact that fixing the police department and the justice system to increase successful prosecution and moving conviction rates up would not solve anything at the grassroots level. The core behaviors must change with conviction.

Our collective outrage to these heinous crimes is always temporary, short-lived and starts with calls for ‘public hangings’ and severe punishments. This is yet another depiction of what this society has become. Hunger for violence and the reactionary approach are based on ad-hoc emotions, which eventually fade away till the next crime is committed, and the cycle begins again.

What we need is several foundation-level concrete measures. There is a dire need for a ‘sex offender registry’, which should be made available nationwide to all law-enforcement agencies. It will prevent – if not eliminate – ‘repeat offenders’. In the case of the Lahore Motorway incident, reports suggested that the main culprit committed an equally despicable crime in 2013.

The increasing number of cases of sexual violence is a clear and present danger to society and must be addressed. It is also true that most rape cases are not reported either under duress or under the fear of public humiliation, especially on social media. The same forums, however, should be used to raise awareness against the otherwise underreported heinous crimes against the vulnerable.

This gradual moral decay of decades should be dealt with at once and the overall mindset should be changed by initiating moral and ethical education.

All influential entities such as our education institutions, scholars, intellectuals, thinkers and academics should engage themselves and support other institutions working for the social welfare of people, correcting the course of misplaced priorities and working on many gender-based violence prevention projects to prevent violence in the ranks and terminate the societal acceptance of misogynistic, unreasonable and stroppy attitudes.

In addition to the largely talked about administrative reforms of the police sector, moral reforms should be introduced to educate people to pre-empt such incidents so that the question of ‘severe’ punishments would become the natural fate of anyone who dares to commit such crimes. Unless there is a free and fair investigative process coupled with judicial fairness of Pakistan’s justice system, incidents of violence against women and children will keep taking place.

The writer is a freelance contributor.