Pakistan must guarantee women their inheritance
https://arab.news/ye6dq
Pakistan’s parliament has recently shot down a draft bill aimed at declaring a share in property inheritance for women as a fundamental human right enshrined in the constitution. This unfortunately adds to the list of official sanctions that cut into the rights of women.
Even though most progressive laws in Pakistan are fiercely opposed – often successfully – in the parliament by its large conservative membership, the rejection by a Senate committee of a draft bill seeking to ensure the status of a fundamental right for women’s inheritance in property is shocking.
If passed, the bill would have neutralized an equally shocking verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in September 2021 that said a woman’s inheritance could only be claimed in her lifetime and her children could not lay a claim to it after her death. Men, however, are allowed this right.
In a country rife with violence against and the mistreatment of women, rights defenders voiced concerns that this discriminatory legal interpretation could lead to the murders of women to deprive them and their children from inheriting their share in immovable properties.
Outmoded cultural practices of denying women a share in family property in Pakistan is widespread even though the list of fundamental rights in the constitution gives due respect to women in society and guarantees ownership rights. Obscure interpretations based on religious grounds, however, have been depriving women of a right that men are guaranteed even in practice.
The rights of ownership of women in inheritance are violated usually by their family members by means of fraud, fabrication and forgery. It is because these misogynistic cultural practices are so deeply entrenched that the state has a duty to proactively eradicate them and why effective legal framework and speedy administrative redressal mechanisms are needed to protect and secure the rights of ownership of women in property.
There is a practiced disconnect between what the laws say and what happens in the name of patriarchal traditions.
Adnan Rehmat
The draft bill, introduced by the opposition in the Senate committee on law and justice, proposed to counter gender discrimination on inheritance matters through the insertion of Article 24A in the constitution, stating that “no woman would be deprived of her share in inheritance.” The committee, dominated by the ruling party of Prime Minister Imran Khan, rejected it promptly.
The whole idea of introducing an explicit new constitutional guarantee on the inheritance of property by women was to cement existing laws that promise the same, but which fail to ensure it. There is a practiced disconnect between what the laws say and what happens in the name of patriarchal traditions.
For instance, the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act of 2011 added a new section to the Pakistan Penal Code criminalizing the act of depriving women of their inheritance right, prescribing a jail term of between five and 10 years or a million-rupee fine to those found guilty. But the law has rarely been used to prevent men denying women their share.
At the grassroots level, the lived experience of many women across all class divides is that often men subject their mothers, sisters and daughters to emotional blackmail, delay inheritance and worse, even compel them to forgo their share of inheritance in writing. Media reports in recent years are full of such cases, often showcasing harrowing outcomes. This is why the rejected bill was important: it said a woman’s right to inheritance is not a luxury conferred by men, but a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution.
Still, this is not the end of the road for women. Progressive parties and parliamentarians in Pakistan need to band together across the political divide to steer a gender affirmative legislative agenda to end discriminatory practices against women that are violative of fundamental human rights.
One way this can be done is for female parliamentarians elected to the 60 reserved seats for women in the National Assembly, 17 in the Senate and dozens in the four provincial legislatures, to activate their caucuses to draft and steer a charter of gender equality to campaign for greater gender affirmative and gender transformative policies and laws.
Neither are women property of men nor their lands. The constitutional guarantees of equal treatment for all citizens and genders, including women and trans-persons who fare even worse, must prevail so that Pakistan is no longer an official gender discriminator in defiance of its own promises. Women own these rights and constitutional guarantees. Now they need to own their rightful properties too.
— Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1