Lawyers have condemned a Pakistan government decision to support notoriously violent tribal councils, arguing that the country is “mainstreaming” misogyny.
The councils, called jirgas, have been known to order civilians to carry out honour killings and "revenge rapes" as a means of "traditional justice".
Earlier this year the government decided to endorse the rulings of jirgas in an effort to control them. MPs voted to integrate jirgas into the formal justice system as long as each jirga is appointed a “neutral arbitrator”. Aiming to prevent misogyny, the arbitrator will need to approve the verdicts of jirgas before they are passed.
Just 23 of 342 members of the lower house in the Pakistan government turned out to vote on the measure.
A law that allows police to arrest members of jirgas for suspected "anti-women" activities was passed in 2011. But activists say the councils, which blend tribal and Islamic customs, are still advocating sexual assault.
In August this year a 15-year-old girl and her boyfriend who attempted to elope were electrocuted and murdered by their fatherson the order of a jirga. A settlement had initially been reached between the two families over the marriage plans but the jirga rejected the agreement and ordered the deaths “as a lesson to others”.
Lawyers have blasted the idea of the government “mainstreaming” jirgas, with one telling the Economist whoever drafted the new law “should be shot”.
In July this year, 24 men were arrested after the alleged revenge gang-rape of a teenage girl, ordered by a jirga. The tribal councils carry a code which considers women to be "property".
But support for jirgas is increasing as more and more civilians are turning to them for a form of “speedy justice”.
For most Pakistanis, a formal legal system is out of reach. Lawsuits on average take more than a decade to resolve and lawyers charge large sums for their services.
A former bureaucrat who runs a popular jirga in the city of Rawalpindo told the Economist: “Only jirgas in illiterate backwaters produce the sort of decisions that end up making shocking headlines”.
Support for jirgas has also come from the UK. A report commissioned by the UK Department for International Development in 2016 advocated studying “merits” of jirgas. The department has since funded gender-sensitivity training for tribal elders in Peshawar, a conservative northern city.
Nearly 1,100 women were killed in Pakistan in 2015 by relatives who believed they had dishonoured their families, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan..
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