Hina Jilani (born 1953 in Lahore) is a lawyer and human-rights activist in Pakistan. She co-founded, with her sister Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's first all-female legal practice in 1980. She is also one of the founders of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Women's Action Forum (a pressure group campaigning against Pakistan's discriminatory legislation) as well as having founded Pakistan's first legal aid center in 1986. [1]
A lawyer and civil society activist and active in the movement for peace, human rights and women's rights in Pakistan for the last three decades, she specializes in human rights litigation, and is especially concerned with the human rights of women, children, minorities, and prisoners. She has conducted several cases which have become landmarks in setting human rights standards in Pakistan. [2]
She has been involved with the United Nations Center for Human Rights, the Carter Center, and the UN Conference on Women. [3]From 2000 to 2008, she was the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders. [4] In 2006, she was appointed to the UN International Fact-Finding Commission on Darfur. She is also a member of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights. [5] She is a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative.[6]
"The problem with the cases of honour killings and their non-prosecution lies in the permission that the law grants to the family of the victim to compromise the offence, and that's why the person who actually pulls the trigger walks free... although in the case of honour killing it's mostly a conspiracy between more than one member of the family, and that's the major issue here. I don't think the government wishes to address that issue." [7]
"I always had this feeling that if you see injustice, you have to speak out against it; otherwise you are not in a position to complain." [8]
"It was anger against state-sponsored injustice that forced me to enter courtrooms in the 1970s. [...] For all these years I have retained that outrage so I have been able to fight for human rights and against bonded labour, blasphemy laws .." (Monday, 15 March 1999, in Tribune India)
"The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions." [9]
"There is a real danger of this occurring. The military have an agenda of supporting the extremists and are ideologically very akin to the extremists. It is very important that the world understand how important it is to act in a wise way."
"The United States totally misread the situation. If Musharraf had been successfully countering terrorism, we would not have a situation eight years down the road where (terrorists) actually control territory. Nobody has tried to find the source of the money or the source of the weapons."
"When you put them on trial, you show the wickedness of their crime. Once it becomes abundantly clear that the terrorists' victims are almost entirely comprised of Pakistani civilians, only then will sympathy for their cause be lost. We have to deal with terrorism as a criminal element."
"The civilian government must be supported thoroughly, otherwise we will lose it." [10]
"The administration of justice can be severely hampered if laws emerge from different understandings or perceptions of religion, and their application becomes uneven because of the religious, moral and social beliefs of those administering these laws. Islam and almost all other religions of the world have sectarian and denominational differences. If a national polity is founded on religion, these differences will be manifested in political tensions as well as oppressive restraints on dissent." [11]
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani
- ^ http://www.sawnet.org/whoswho/?Jilani+Hina
- ^ http://www.sawnet.org/whoswho/?Jilani+Hina
- ^ http://www.cartercenter.com/peace/human_rights/defenders/defenders/pakistan_hina_jilani.html
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani by Beena Sarwar on February 20, 2009
- ^ [1]
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani by Jennifer Byrne on May 2, 2000
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani by Michelle Stephenson
- ^ Pakistan: Honour killings of women and girls - Amnesty International
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani
- ^ Interview with Hina Jilani by Nermeen Shaikh of Asia Society on August 17, 2008
