COMMENT: The Balochistan truth —Sanaullah Baloch
COMMENT: The Balochistan truth —Sanaullah Baloch
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
The increasing rate of preventable maternal mortality is a symptom
of the larger social injustice of discrimination against women.
Thousands of avoidable maternal deaths each year indicate the
government’s unfaithfulness to domestic and international laws
During the recent visit of
President
Asif Ali Zardari, due to closure of the roads in Quetta, a poor woman
gave a birth in an auto rickshaw. The situation in Balochistan will not
be any different if the president would not have visited, but thanks to
the media’s ambivalent relationship with the president, they
highlighted and debated the issue at length to disparage Mr Zardari.
Though,
fortuitously, this impecunious woman survived, there are hundreds of
unfortunate women in the province who lose their lives simply because
of natal complications and lack of maternal healthcare facilities.
The
state of women’s rights in the province presents an extremely grim
picture, where the maternal mortality ratio in rural Balochistan is 750
compared with the national average of 270 deaths per every 100,000 live
births.
Women are discriminated against in the country at
large, but in Balochistan they are discriminated against by the state.
They have no access to enabling opportunities required for the
empowerment of women in any modern and civilised society. Due to acute
poverty, lack of medical facilities and trained personnel, and
extremely poor infrastructure and communication resources, women in
Balochistan are the prime victims of systematic and institutionalised
discrimination imposed by Islamabad’s super-elite and policy makers.
The
endless military operation, internal displacement, disappearances,
intimidation and the prolonged Baloch-Islamabad conflict are hitting
hard the already deprived women in the province. The central
government’s discriminatory policy is not only resulting in a slowdown
of gender empowerment, it is affecting the overall social and economic
development process in the province.
During the recent
offensives against the Baloch people started in 2003 and escalated in
December 2005, about 2,600 to 3,200 innocent people have been killed in
the operations including air raids in Balochistan, especially in Marri
and Bugti areas. About 80-85 percent of those either killed or injured
were women and children.
According to the United Nations
December 2006 estimates, there were 84,000 internally displaced persons
(IDPs) in Balochistan, of which 26,000 were women and 33,000 were
children. The provincial officials have not provided any relief and
standard shelter to the Baloch IDPs. According to local sources, due to
total blockade of Marri and Bugti areas by the security forces, about
8,000 to 10,000 allegedly died due to exodus, malnourishment, lack of
shelter and disease. They had been reportedly living in deplorable
conditions in the makeshift camps with no access to potable water,
food, and other basic necessities. No medical facilities, electricity
or even fuel to run water pumps was provided to these areas.
There
have been reports of a severe malnutrition crisis among the IDPs.
UNICEF, in its internal assessment report on nutritional status of
women and children among the IDPs, revealed that 28 percent children
under the age of five were ‘acutely undernourished’. Out of them, six
percent were in the state of ‘severely acute malnutrition’ and 80
percent of the deaths among the IDPs were of children under the age of
five. Six percent of the children were so underfed that they would die
without immediate medical attention.
From the beginning,
Islamabad has outrageously tried to cover up its ill-conceived and
discriminatory policies by blaming the Baloch themselves for their
appalling state. However, findings on health, education, communication,
political empowerment and economic development clearly indicate that
human development in Balochistan has been deliberately ignored by
successive governments.
The increasing rate of preventable
maternal mortality is a symptom of the larger social injustice of
discrimination against women. Thousands of avoidable maternal deaths
each year indicate the government’s unfaithfulness to domestic and
international laws. Experts have indicated the basic lack of safe
drinking water and sanitation as the major cause of infant and maternal
mortality in the province.
The Pakistan Living Standard
Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2004-5, identifies a sharp inter-provincial
disparity with regard to access to safe drinking water. Several reports
state that 52 percent of the population in Balochistan uses wells and
open ponds for drinking water, compared to three percent in Punjab, 13
percent in Sindh and 35 percent in NWFP.
Despite being a
signatory of major international conventions, Islamabad continues to
ignore women’s basic rights to education in Balochistan. Access to all
levels of education is crucial to empowering girls and women to
participate in economic, social and political life of their societies.
Education unlocks a woman’s potential, and is accompanied by
improvements in health, nutrition, and well being of their families.
The PSLM survey reported alarming regional disparity in the education
sector. According to the survey, only 27 percent of the students in
Balochistan complete primary or higher education, compared to 64
percent in Punjab. The increasing dropout rate is due to the
unavailability of middle and high schools.
Islamabad is totally
inactive and ignorant about the need to reduce or remove the
interprovincial gender disparity and bring the neglected women of
Balochistan at par with the rest of the provinces. Inter-provincial
gender inequality in the employment sector is unspeakable. According to
the State Bank of Pakistan’s 2005-06 report, Balochistan and the NWFP
have the highest female unemployment rate of 27 percent and 29 percent,
compared to seven percent and 20 percent for Punjab and Sindh
respectively.
In fact, acute poverty at the margins appeared to
be hitting the hardest at women. As long as women’s access to
healthcare, education and training remains limited, prospects for
improved social status of female population will remain bleak.
A
large number of women’s vocational and training centres in Punjab make
women more capable and confident to qualify for market jobs. Punjab has
111 women’s vocational institutes; Balochistan has only one.
Due
to the severe shortage of girls’ schools in the province, only 23
percent rural girls are lucky enough to be enrolled at primary level as
compared to 47 percent in rural Punjab.
The Social Policy
Development Centre 2005 report discovered that the percentage of the
population living in a high degree of deprivation stands at 88 percent
in Balochistan, 51 percent in the NWFP, 49 percent in Sindh and 25
percent in Punjab. According to poverty-related reports, the percentage
of the population living below the poverty line stands at 63 percent in
Balochistan, 26 percent in Punjab, 29 percent in the NWFP and 38
percent in Sindh.
No development policy could succeed unless it
is based on the needs and participation of the people in the process.
In Balochistan’s case, what the people need is socio-economic
development, political empowerment, clean drinking water, electricity,
practical education, basic health facilities, and proper roads and
infrastructure connecting rural towns to the main centres.
But
the central government is doing the opposite. The Baloch are subject to
extreme discrimination. No state in the present era singles out its
citizens on the basis of region and ethnicity. My friend President
Zardari, instead of giving a few hundred thousand rupees to the victim
whose case was highlighted due to his visit to Quetta, needs to address
the appalling state of women’s rights and issues in Sindh and
Balochistan and rectify some of the discriminatory institutional
policies preventing women’s empowerment in all aspects of society.
The
writer is a former Senator and Research Fellow at Inter-Parliamentary
Union Geneva, Switzerland. He can be reached at balochbnp@gmail.com
In : Sanaullah Baloch
Notes