Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) – Pakistan

1. Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) – Pakistan A socio-political treadmill for women, children and minorities

2. Demographic Profile Total population 6.5 million people, roughly 2% of Pakistan's population. The average annual population growth lower than provincial average of 2.8 per cent and the national average of 2.7 per cent (GoP, 1998). The average household 9.3 persons,

3. Broader socio-economic featuresSource; Official FATA website

4. Broader socio-economic features • 43% of FATA citizens have access to clean drinking water. The per-capita income is half the modest national figure of $500 a year. • There is no banking system. The smuggling of opium, weapon trade and other contraband are common.

5. Governance • Created by the British to serve as a buffer between undivided India and Afghanistan. • Special system of political administration to govern these tribes. • Maximum autonomy • Life under tribal code (Pushtunwali)

6. Tribal Code Pushtunwali (cornerstone) • melmastia (hospitality and protection to every guest); • nanawati (the right of a fugitive to seek refuge, and acceptance of his bona fide offer of peace); • badal (the right of blood feuds or revenge); • tureh (bravery); • sabat (steadfastness); • imandari (righteousness); • 'isteqamat (persistence); • ghayrat (defense of property and honor); • and namus (defense of one's women).

7. Legal System • National Laws are not extended • The Pakistani courts and police have no jurisdiction in tribal areas. • Universal Adult Franchise in 1997, political parties act is not extended • Frontier Crimes Regulation

8. Population by gender (FATA, 1998) • 126,577 persons, most of whom are likely to be men, are recorded as migrants from FATA in other parts of Pakistan during the 1998 census

9. Women Status • They are subject to physical segregation, forced immobility and economic exclusion. • They are denied access to education and jobs, • have no right to marry by choice, • virtually no access to justice, • enjoy little freedom of movement. • Suffered honour crimes • Compensation for murder (Swara)

10. Legal Status of Women • Muslim Family Laws are not applicable (no rights to termination of marriage and guardianship of the children). • No right to inheritance • Murdered with impunity, forensic evidence can not be collected. • No participation in decision making processes (can not participate in jirga, the decision making assembly of male elders of the tribe).

11. Women’s Right to Education (if people are forced to keep their daughters uneducated, the future is certainly bleak. ) • Women literacy 1 % • Infrastructure minimal • Extremists have bombed hundreds of girls' schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home • Dozens of female teachers have been killed. • 180 community schools for girls set up with the assistance of the Norwegian government - have been closed

12. Effects of terrorism on women and children • Displacement • Victims of landmines, landmine explosions are the main cause of children’s death in the tribal belt. Till the beginning of this year, 203 children had been injured only in Bajaur Agency. • Of the victims, 37 % children were hit by landmines on their way to school while 28 % were hit while passing through landmine strewn fields. • Last year, 405 landmine related accidents took place in Kurram agency with a death toll of 157.

13. Campaign against polio and universal vaccination of children (a case study) • Pakistan recorded 25,000 polio cases in 1994, 558 in 1999, 28 in 2005 and the number of polio affected children was only 12 in 2006. In Pakistan, 85% of the districts are free of polio cases for almost three years whereas 60% of the cases in 2006 were restricted to only six districts. • Efforts to immunise hundreds of thousands of children against polio in FATA and adjoining Swat valley were thwarted in early 2007. A 12-member polio vaccination team was taken hostage and subsequently released after severe torture. • Justification: “US conspiracy to render people incapable of producing children.”

14. In June, 2006, a petition was registered with the Peshawar High Court to stop polio vaccination. The petitioner cited some Nigerian source, alleging that Estrogen and Estradoil “weaken the male reproductive system and accelerate puberty in females”; two most volatile concerns of the conservatives the world over. Interestingly, Pakistan is one of the only four nations where polio is still endemic; others being India, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

15. Minority within majorityShia’s case study • The people of Kurram Agency have been suffering horrific sectarian violence at the hands of home-bred and foreign terrorists since early 2007 • In April 2007, around 55 people were killed during sectarian clashes in the Kurram Agency of FATA as Shia and Sunni militants attacked each other’s village with heavy weapons.

16. The state of women, children and minorities in any community constitutes the yardstick to measure the sensitivity, vitality and prospects of the concerned polity community as a human collective. When it comes to vulnerable groups, numbers avails not. Neither does the volume or the scale of injustice make much of a difference because all forms of discrimination, abuse, neglect or injustice to such groups essentially define the character of the social contract without prejudice to the intensity or obscurity of the factual details.

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