Gender Violence – Acid Violence
Gender Violence is a subject which has many ugly faces. Roughly it is divided in two; Verbal violence and physical violence. Whilst the latter has often taken precedence in women empowerment struggles, it is the former which is the silent killer and the most traumatic to fully recover from. More on that later but today I wish to share my personal story on Acid Violence; a crime often found in cotton growing countries where the sale of acid is unregulated and the crime is rampant.
Acid crime control is a specific type of GBV where often a man destroys and disfigures a woman’s body parts because he has been rejected in affection. The severity of the crime is such that women often die because of acid being thrown in their face or body since the burns are mostly fatal. If they do survive, they do so with a face which is so disfigured that it destroys their lives. As a result, the pain or hurt caused to the woman far outweighs death and she dies on a daily basis with the torture of living with a disfigured body.
My first encounter with this crime was in January 2009 in my home town Karachi (Sindh, Pakistan) when I met Maria Shah a young girl from Shikarpur, (Sindh, Pakistan) on her hospital bed in Burns Ward. Her only crime to land up in a fatal state in hospital was that she had refused advances from a suitor. I will never forget those eyes. She pressed my hand and made me promise her the following: “Adi, I have already suffered and lost. I will not survive. I know it. You must save other girls from this hell.” That was enough of a chilling advice from a dying victim. I had no other choice but to espouse this cause. I spent the next few years pursuing the objective that I would legislate in such a way that there would be fewer Marias in Pakistan. I soon connected with the Acid Survivors Foundation an NGO led by Valerie in February 2009 so that I could educate myself on this GBV in my country and internationally. Within the month of seeing Maria, I had met experts and on February 24, 2009, I submitted my first bill on Acid Crime Control. I was joined by a known Retd Justice Fakhurid-un-Nisa who was now a Member of Parliament. My first attempt to table the bill was in April but it was disallowed by parliament. I wish to take you through the entire parliamentary history of this bill so that the process is understood and it is clear how cumbersome it is. This itself is an issue for women empowerment we need to do better in our home legislative grounds.
I regularly visited burn and acid victims in the next couple of years whilst lobbying for my bill. A visit on July 22 2010, to Nosheen, in Shabqadar KP particularly motivated me to plough through the government procedures faster. It was after a good two years in April 2011 that my Bill was finally approved by the Women Standing Committee of parliament. On May 10, 2011 The National Assembly of Pakistan finally passed the bill unanimously after much efforts by women legislators from all parties in the Women caucus. I was so frustrated by the entire process which had taken so long that my message after its passage was a veiled threat to all parliamentarians that its implementation in each constituency was their personal responsibility without which we would not be able to bring about real progress on this evil.
The momentum for the bill was further maintained and accelerated splendidly when the film maker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy won Pakistan’s first Oscar through her documentary ‘Saving Face’ which was positioned around the bill and the victims. After this my Acid legislation was show cased in world parliaments and used as a Model. It proved fairly useful because it had the main components needed by all states. I was able to submit a second version of this Acid legislation. But imagine it took me 5 years and my own government tenure and I was not able to pass that particular Version 2.0 of my first Acid legislation till my last day in parliament in June 2018. It is such legislations on women empowerment which are the today and future useful for SOTF.
Women empowerment legislation whether on GBV or others must be modelled and used around the world to reduce the time in takes to create new legislation from scratch. Why re-invent the wheel? As a former legislator I am a firm believer that Member states must learn from each other and localize their legislations to churn them out faster as solutions for a safer equitable gender friendly future. Here I share the top of the line features. More is available on the UN Women website on the same.
What is important to note in this journey are the salient features of the legislation which form the basis of the literature on Acid. The definition in Penal codes of the type of disfigurement was important; disfigurement and defacing need to both be addressed. It is important to establish hurt caused by corrosive substances within the definition. Punishment for the said hurt must be non-compoundable non bailable, life imprisonment or imprisonment for no less than 14 years and a minimum fine if the victim dies and 7 years if the victim survives. The interim relief which the court was to give the victim was for the loss of earning, medical expenses, damages on account of disfigurement and/or disability.
In essence an acid legislation must do the following: 1. Offer free medical treatment and rehabilitation for acid burn victims. 2. Legally bind medical practitioners to inform law enforcement agencies and take photographic evidence of injuries in acid attacks. 3. Provide interim monetary relief to victims for expenses and losses incurred, besides penalizing abettors. 4. Outline a process for conducting trials of accused in the shortest possible time. 5. Ensure protection for witnesses, provision of legal aid and financial support for victims and their dependents. 6. Strengthen the court’s ability to convict criminals, support victims, besides offering a comprehensive investigation mechanism of not more than 60 days. For details on the legislation you may refer to the Version 2.0 of my legislation http://13.126.176.151/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Acid-and-Burn-Crime-Bill-2014.pdf. Any legislation must clearly identify the country in question’s investigation, trial and appeal process. It must establish an acid and burn crime monitoring board.
The Acid journey in many countries is ongoing. I believe that we must learn from each other’s legislation to build a more formidable response suited to one’s particular environment. The SOFT has a moral responsibility to share legislative frameworks and implementation frameworks for all such legislations. Only then can we claim to make the world a safer place for our daughters.