ISLAMABAD: Sherry Rehman, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) vice president, urged more women to stand as politicians, in an interview with Arab News on International Women’s Day on Thursday.
Rehman worked as a journalist before Benazir Bhutto, the country’s twice-elected former prime minister assassinated by terrorists in 2007, brought her into public office.
“Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister of the Muslim world, was a truly inspiring figure,” said Rehman who witnessed the death of her mentor.
Bhutto guided her through the complexities of Pakistan’s political system, helping her to step up to the challenges involved. The PPP, she added, has always welcomed women.
Rehman added that women could bring about change from the corridors of power, saying that politics in Pakistan was “very much a testosterone-dominated field.” She argued that politics around the world desperately needed women to “genuinely shake things up and produce legislation that reflects the experience of being a woman.”
Farah Azeem Shah, a member of Balochistan National Party Awami (BNP-A), who wants to become her region’s first female Chief Minister, concurred with Rehman.
She said: “It’s time for a woman to step in where men have failed to resolve matters.”
Shah decided to step back in 2017 and took an indefinite leave of absence from politics, disheartened by “corruption and self-serving bureaucracy.”
Outside of politics, she embraced causes such as poverty alleviation targets, increasing access to education and health care, fighting for women’s rights, before concluding that it was all “futile without political assistance.”
Shah is now preparing to run for the 2018 general elections from her constituency, Kalat.
According to the UN 2017 global survey of women in politics, women’s voices are still missing from the executive branches of governments and parliaments worldwide, slowing achievement on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly gender equality.
Pakistan ranks 174th globally, according to the women in ministerial positions along with 12 more countries, and 89th, according to the percentage of women in the lower house of parliament.
However, Krishna Kumari, a female senator-elect who comes from the minority Hindu community, has emerged as a symbol in Pakistan’s conservative and male-dominated society.
“What seemed to be unthinkable in the past decades has happened,” said Rehman. “For me, this truly is a historic moment for Pakistan and an empowering one for all women and minorities.”
Call for more female politicians in Pakistan
Call for more female politicians in Pakistan
Four migrants die in US immigration custody over first 10 days of 2026
- Trump administration increases migrant detentions, aims for more deportations
- DHS says death rate aligns with historic norms amid rising detentions
WASHINGTON: Four migrants died while in custody of US immigration authorities over the first 10 days of 2026, according to government press releases, a loss of life that followed record detention deaths last year under President Donald Trump.
The deaths included two migrants from Honduras, one from Cuba and another from Cambodia, and occurred from January 3-9, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Trump administration aims to ramp up deportations and has increased the number of migrants in detention. As of January 7, ICE statistics showed that the agency was detaining 69,000 people. The numbers were expected to rise following a massive ICE funding infusion passed by the US Congress last year. At least 30 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest level in two decades, agency figures showed.
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, called the high number of deaths “truly staggering” and urged the administration to shutter detention centers.
US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the rate of deaths had remained in step with historic norms as the detention population has climbed. “As bed space has expanded, we have maintained higher standard of care than most prisons that hold US citizens — including providing access to proper medical care,” McLaughlin said.
The Cuban detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, died on January 3 in Camp East Montana, a detention site opened by the Trump administration on the grounds of Fort Bliss in Texas. ICE said it was investigating the death of Lunas, adding that officials said he had become disruptive and placed him in isolation. Officials later found him in distress, and emergency medical technicians pronounced him dead, ICE said.
The two Honduran men — Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 42, and Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz, 68 — died in area hospitals in Houston and Indio, California, on January 5 and 6, respectively, both following heart-related issues, ICE said.
Parady La, a Cambodian man, 46, died on January 9 following severe drug withdrawal symptoms at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, ICE said. The administration began using that space last year, it said. The Trump administration has greatly reduced the number of migrants released from detention on humanitarian grounds, a move critics say has driven some to accept deportation. In addition to the in-custody deaths, an ICE officer fatally shot a Minnesota mother of three last week, an incident that sparked protests in Minneapolis and cities around the country.
