Brutal killing of 11-year-old highlights unrelenting sexual violence in India

PATRIARCHY IS MISOGYNY & FEMICIDE

Reuters 

July 15, 2026 

On a Saturday evening this month, an 11-year-old girl left her home for a friend’s birthday party in a small town in eastern India.

She never returned.

She was kidnapped, raped, bundled into a sack and thrown into a pond by a gang of men while still alive, according to a local investigating police officer.

A health and physical education textbook of an 11-year-old girl who was raped and killed last week, is kept inside her parents’ house in a town near Kolkata, West Bengal, India on July 11, 2026. —Reuters/File

The assault was the latest example of the brutal sexual violence that is endemic across India, with over 80 rapes reported to police every day, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

Many more assaults go unreported because of victim blaming and shaming, activists say.

Deep-seated patriarchy and misogyny, understaffed police forces and severe judicial delays contribute to many perpetrators believing they can escape punishment for assaulting women.

That sense of impunity feeds into the unrelenting spread of such cases, activists say.

The gang rape of a student in Delhi in 2012 triggered sweeping legal reforms, including more severe punishments for those convicted and fast-track courts.

India’s economy has surged since then and the nation has been propelled into the ranks of the world’s elite, but its dismal record on sexual violence remains unchanged.

In Baruipur, stunned locals, her 46-year-old father among them, watched as the girl’s lifeless body covered in bite marks and bruises was pulled from the trash-strewn pond on the morning of July 5, a day after she went missing, according to interviews with the police and residents.

“My mind is not working. I have not been able to think straight in days,” the girl’s father told Reuters.

Father of an 11-year-old girl who was raped and killed speaks on his mobile phone in a town near Kolkata, West Bengal, India on July 11, 2026. —Reuters/File

Reuters is withholding the identities of the victim and her family because Indian law bars the disclosure of details that could identify survivors or victims in such cases.

The incident has put Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the spot just months after it took power for the first time in West Bengal state, where Baruipur is located, with women’s safety among its top poll promises.

But activists say no change of government can fix deep-rooted failures such as the patriarchy that rules most Indian communities, the lack of gender-progressive administrators in the police and judiciary and sexual violence tied to caste hierarchies.

India recorded 29,536 rape cases in 2024, little changed in recent years, while sexual offences against children have risen sharply over the past decade.

Cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) reached a record 69,191.

In the past month alone, at least two other cases have drawn national attention.

In northwestern Rajasthan state, a 12-year-old girl was abducted, drugged and raped by multiple men over four days in various hotels before she was rescued, local police told Reuters.

So far, 22 people have been arrested, police said.

On Monday, the Times of India newspaper reported that a 7-year-old girl was raped before being killed and her body thrown into an empty shaft of an under-construction shopping mall in Ghaziabad, about 30 km from India’s parliament.

Karuna Nundy, a lawyer who helped draft anti-rape laws, said that no government had seriously attempted to “uproot the misogyny and patriarchy” that lie at the root of this problem.

“There needs to be a sustained effort towards changing behaviour at the community level,” she said.

“It is crucial to recruit the right kind of police personnel and appoint judges who have a gender progressive understanding of these issues.”

Nothing has changed

Tougher sentences followed the 2012 gang rape and murder of the woman in a moving bus in Delhi, a case that shocked India and triggered one of the biggest public protests in the country in years.

“Nothing is going to change simply because the regime changes. This is a deep-rooted problem embedded in our patriarchal culture, not just in West Bengal but across India,” said Satabdi Das, a gender rights activist based in Kolkata.

Satabdi Das, 42, a gender rights activist, poses for a photograph inside her home in Kolkata, India on July 12, 2026. —Reuters/File

The government had originally projected it would set up 2,600 fast-track special courts for sexual crimes by 2026, but according to the latest government data, only 755 such courts have been set up, including 410 exclusive POCSO courts, across the country.

India’s National Commission for Women, a government-appointed watchdog, said that the incident in Rajasthan reflected “serious administrative lapses, policing gaps and inadequate monitoring mechanisms that allowed such criminal activities to continue.”

Hari Shankar Yadav, a senior Rajasthan police officer, said the department had taken proactive steps to arrest the main accused within hours of the case being registered and rescued the child.

In the Baruipur case, the girl’s family said a faster police response to the initial missing-person complaint that night could have saved her life.

“Apart from asking a few locals about her whereabouts, the police did not do much,” a close friend of the family told Reuters.

The locals decided to examine CCTV footage themselves, and sourced clips from two such cameras.

Arvind Kumar Anand, a police officer in Baruipur, said the department was looking at internal reports “to see who made what mistake”.

Extrajudicial killings

Public anger over slow trials has also fed support for so-called “encounter” or extrajudicial killings, in which police shoot suspects in disputed circumstances, rights activists say.

In the Baruipur case, one man suspected in the crime was killed after officers opened fire when he snatched a weapon from a police team, police said.

Agnimitra Paul, a BJP state minister in West Bengal, said four accused had been arrested and one was “killed in an encounter”, adding, “The message is very clear from our government that we are not going to tolerate any kind of nonsense.”

Agnimitra Paul, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state minister in West Bengal and member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, speaks inside her office in Kolkata, India on July 13, 2026. —Reuters/File

Opposition leaders and human rights activists say such killings bypass due process and weaken the justice system.

“The police shooting of suspects is a spectacle designed to assuage the anxiety of society; that instant justice will make the crime disappear,” said Vrinda Grover, a lawyer and rights activist.

“Far from deterring crime, it gives impetus to the arbitrary powers of the police and the state over the lives of citizens.”

 INDIA

Women's Reservation, Delimitation, and Future of Representation

Zoya Hasan | 14 Jul 2026

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The proposals on seat expansion, women’s reservation, and delimitation seek to reconfigure the architecture of India’s political system in ways that could make the BJP’s electoral dominance easier to sustain.

Women have been at the forefront of Indian politics since the freedom struggle. Yet, their participation in governance and representation in legislatures and other decision-making institutions remains disproportionately low. Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent. Women remain underrepresented because access to electoral candidature is unequal and largely controlled by political party committees with limited representation of women. This persistent democratic deficit has led women’s groups and prominent women politicians to advocate consistently for reservations for women in legislatures as a means of expanding their political representation. For the past five decades, this demand has remained as the central focus of their political mobilisation and advocacy, yet it has not been implemented.

First introduced in 1996, the Women's Reservation Bill has been repeatedly tabled in Parliament under successive governments but never enacted, reflecting sustained political resistance. Few legislative proposals in the history of the Indian Parliament have generated as much controversy. Much of the opposition stemmed from concerns among male political elites that mandatory reservations would fundamentally alter existing political power structures and jeopardise their political careers, thereby shaking the ground beneath their feet. Nearly three decades later, in September 2023, Parliament passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023, popularly known as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, providing for one-third reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas, including within constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Despite unanimous political support, the Act remains unimplemented because its operation was made contingent on the next Census and the subsequent delimitation exercise. Unlike the Women's Reservation Bill passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010, which contained no such preconditions, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam linked implementation to both processes, thereby ruling out its application in the 2024 general election. Opposition parties and women's organisations criticised these unnecessary conditions, arguing that they would indefinitely delay women’s representation as the government was transforming a gender justice reform into a broader exercise of electoral restructuring and possible gerrymandering. The government dismissed these concerns, assuring Parliament that the Delimitation Commission would be set up after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and that the Census would be completed in time. None of this has materialised. 

Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent.

Three years later, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’) government’s position appeared to shift. Reports indicated that it was willing to implement women’s reservation without waiting for either the next Census or the delimitation process envisaged under the 2023 Act, instead relying on the 2011 Census to expedite implementation. This is odd particularly when a new Census is underway.

Over the past decade and a half, migration, urbanisation, and the socio-economic disruptions caused by the pandemic have significantly altered population distributions. The next Census will be a landmark in more ways than one, with caste data to be collected for the first time in independent India, potentially reshaping the social basis of political representation. Proceeding in advance of updated Census data, therefore, carries multiple risks: it may produce a misalignment between representation and demographic reality, invite future political contestation once new data emerges, and necessitate further adjustments that could undermine institutional stability.

The 2026 Bills and Why They Failed

The special session of Parliament held from April 16 to April 18, 2026 was convened ostensibly to expedite women’s reservation. It introduced a package of three interconnected Bills: the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026; the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026; and the Delimitation Bill, 2026 (On the women’s reservation bill’s legislative journey, see here). While the latter two require only a simple majority, the first requires a two-thirds majority. Together, the Bills tied the implementation of women’s reservation to a substantial expansion of the Lok Sabha, and this also laid the groundwork for the next delimitation exercise, which would redistribute parliamentary seats among the states, redraw constituency boundaries, and reserve one-third of seats for women, including within constituencies already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. 

The proposed expansion was supposed to increase the Lok Sabha to 816 seats, but this was not incorporated into the text of the Bills. Although Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Parliament that no state would lose its proportional representation, such guarantees cannot ordinarily rest on executive assurances. If states are to be protected against a loss of representation, that guarantee must be embedded in the legislation itself rather than left to political commitments.

However, the 131st Constitutional Amendment Bill was defeated, securing 298 votes in favour and 230 against, well short of the two-thirds majority required for its passage. Its defeat was widely anticipated because the government had made women’s reservation contingent on Lok Sabha expansion, which is a far-reaching constitutional exercise. Moreover, these bills were also introduced while elections were underway in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Puducherry, and it was done without adequate consultation and adherence to pre-legislative norms, prompting opposition parties to accuse the government of rushing constitutional changes without proper discussion during the election season. 

Following its defeat, the government withdrew the linked Delimitation and Union Territories Bills, leaving the timelines for both seat expansion and women’s reservation uncertain. However, if implemented in the future, the proposed expansion would constitute the most significant change to India's representative structure since the introduction of universal adult franchise. 

If implemented in the future, the proposed expansion would constitute the most significant change to India's representative structure since the introduction of universal adult franchise. 

There was no explanation or rationale given for the huge increase in the size of the Lok Sabha, which would make it unwieldy with little room for meaningful debate. In theory, it would have to meet continuously throughout the year to allow members adequate speaking time, which would further its dysfunctionality. In reality, however, the number of sitting days of the Lok Sabha has steadily declined in the last two of its terms (On Lok Sabha sittings, see here). 

Most opposition parties explicitly support women's reservation within the existing strength of the Lok Sabha. But the government was unwilling to take this route. Instead, the National Democratic Alliance (‘NDA’) government went for seat expansion and then reservations. It was assumed that no party would oppose women’s reservation, and concerns over delimitation could be overcome through assurances of a uniform increase in seats. However, these expectations were belied. Nevertheless, the government was quick to blame the opposition parties for this denouement, reproaching them for obstructing women's reservation and especially portraying the Congress and its allies as mahila virodhi. The government for its part had done precious little to implement reservations. 

In fact, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam Act, although it was unanimously passed in 2023, was not even notified until the night of April 16, 2026, nearly thirty months after its enactment. Had the government been serious, it could have delinked women's reservation from delimitation and parliamentary expansion. Nothing in the Constitution requires women's reservation to await an increase in the strength of the Lok Sabha. 

Women’s reservation was not the central objective of the special parliamentary session in April. Rather, women’s reservation functioned as a cover for advancing delimitation. It was an attempt to prematurely initiate the delimitation exercise by sidestepping the existing constitutional framework, which effectively precludes any such exercise until the availability of data from the 2027 Census. Viewed in this light, the primary focus shifted from enhancing gender representation to restructuring the electoral landscape ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

Beyond questions of timing, both the 131st Amendment and the earlier 2023 Act leave key aspects of its implementation unresolved. It remains unclear how seats will be identified for reservation in the expanded Parliament. It mandates a one-third quota but leaves the mechanics, especially the rotation of reserved constituencies, to be decided later. This is no minor detail. Rotation shapes who can contest, where, and with what continuity, directly affecting accountability and constituency development. While the present Act retains the principle of rotation from the earlier Act, it does not specify the criteria for identifying reserved constituencies or the mechanism by which rotation will be carried out. This uncertainty could create prolonged political disputes over constituency allocation and undermine confidence in the fairness of the reservation process.

In practice, the proposed expansion of the Lok Sabha would disproportionately strengthen the political weight of the more populous northern states, where population growth has remained relatively high.

Delimitation and States' Representation

Delimitation has now emerged as the central issue. The Constitution requires Lok Sabha seats to be allocated among the states in broad proportion to their populations, ensuring equality of representation. Parliamentary constituencies were redrawn after the 1951, 1961 and 1971 Censuses, but successive governments thereafter deferred further delimitation despite significant demographic shifts. Even though the northern states experienced much faster population growth than the south in the decades that followed, there was a broad political consensus that the distribution of Lok Sabha seats should remain frozen at the 1971 level until the first Census conducted after 2026. This was not merely a technical measure but a political compromise designed to ensure that states that had successfully implemented population control policies were not penalised in terms of parliamentary representation. It, thus, preserved a measure of federal balance, even at the cost of strict population-based equality. The freeze was based on the assumption that the northern states would eventually catch up on population control and development, which has not occurred, reinforcing the view that demography alone cannot determine the allocation of seats among states.

The current legislative package marks a departure from that long-standing consensus. By proposing a larger Lok Sabha and a fresh reapportionment of seats, it revives the contentious constitutional question of how representation should be allocated among the states. These concerns are compounded by the recent delimitation exercises in Assam and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which have heightened apprehensions about the delimitation process and its potential for communal gerrymandering. In the absence of a transparent and impartial allocation formula, it is impossible to assess whether the exercise will strike an appropriate constitutional balance between equality of representation and federal fairness, or whether it will instead create opportunities for gerrymandering.

Political Consequences

The defeat of the Delimitation Bill marked a significant political setback for the ruling party. Nevertheless, it appears determined to reintroduce bills to reserve seats for women alongside the proposal to expand the Lok Sabha, despite still lacking a two-thirds majority to do so. The expansion of the Lok Sabha by roughly 50 per cent is being presented as a uniform and equitable increase for all states. In practice, however, it would disproportionately strengthen the political weight of the more populous northern states, where population growth has remained relatively high, while diminishing the relative representation of the southern states despite their demographic stabilisation and substantial contribution to the national economy. Delimitation based solely on population privileges numerical strength over developmental performance, allowing demographic weight to outweigh economic contribution and governance outcomes. This would further reinforce the political dominance of the Hindi-speaking belt, an inevitable consequence of increasing the Lok Sabha’s size. This would also strengthen the BJP, and its majoritarian project, which is centred in the Hindi heartland, where it enjoys a powerful electoral base that would translate into greater parliamentary majorities.

The proposals on seat expansion, women’s reservation, and delimitation have arisen from a specific political conjuncture: the ruling party’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority on its own in the 2024 general elections. Yet the purpose of these constitutional changes extends beyond winning the next parliamentary election. They seek to reconfigure the architecture of the political system in ways that could make the BJP’s electoral dominance easier to sustain, bringing it closer to a durable, potentially permanent, majority anchored in the Hindi heartland. 

It could fundamentally rebalance political power across regions, social groups, and genders, reshaping who is represented, from where, and in what proportions. Whether they ultimately strengthen or weaken India’s representative democracy will depend on their ability to broaden political inclusion while preserving the constitutional balance between equality, federalism and fairness. 

In particular, the central challenge lies in reconciling population-based representation with federal balance, ensuring that more populous states do not acquire overwhelming political dominance while upholding the democratic principle of equal representation. None of this diminishes the case for women’s reservation, which is long overdue and ought to be implemented without any further delay. There is no reason why the imperative of enhancing women’s representation should be tied to a broader package of constitutional changes whose consequences for India’s democracy remain deeply contested. 

Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Courtesy: The Leaflet

Generative AI’s power sparks fears of dumbing humans down

AFP Published 

July 16, 2026 

ChatGPT logo and AI Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken on May 4, 2023. — Reuters/File

• Studies suggest memory, decision-making, critical thinking are most at risk

• Experts say artificial intelligence removes ‘learning opportunities’

• Studies suggest AI boosts short-term gains, but weakens long-term learning

• Long-term impact on human brain remains unclear

PARIS: Generative AI chatbots capable of writing emails and computer code, translating, organising a trip or coming up with gift ideas are now readily available, prompting some to ask whether human brainpower could suffer for lack of use.

A simple natural-language prompt is usually enough to draw a useable response from a service like ChatGPT or Claude, with the effects making themselves felt in schools and universities, workplaces from offices to courtrooms and our personal lives.

Recent scientific studies suggest there could be harmful consequences to farming out cognitive tasks to AI.


They highlight memory, decision-making and critical thinking as particularly at risk.

One American-British study of 1,222 people, still under peer review, found that using AI tools to solve arithmetic or reading comprehension exercises improved participants’ performance in the short term, but in the long run diminished their results and their willingness to keep trying when the tools were unavailable.

“These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning,” the authors wrote.


AI’s ability to conjure up speedy responses to all kinds of questions “removes learning opportunities” from users, said Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student Grace Liu, the article’s main author.

“What makes AI particularly concerning is that it’s not a tool designated for one specific kind of activity. It’s something that can be used across pretty much any intellectual, reasoning, cognitive activity.” The technology’s adaptability to different kinds of problems sets it apart from previous waves of computerised aids.


Electronic calculators, for instance, may have helped users solve equations — but left the method and reasoning process in human hands.

Saving energy

One 2025 MIT study went viral for its finding that students using generative AI to write essays displayed less critical thinking capability.

Other research has pointed the same way, highlighting what has come to be called “cognitive offloading” — or even “cognitive surrender”.

“Human beings have a strong tendency to save energy,” said Johann Che­v­­alere, a researcher in social and cognitive psychology at France’s publicly-funded CNRS institution.

“In daily life, we often use strategies that get us to the heart of the matter quicker, without necessarily taking the time to study in depth the information we need to process, as this can be cognitively costly,” he added.


Generative AI use could strengthen this tendency, Chevalere said.

“If there are activities you never do, the brain — which works by saving energy — won’t go to the trouble of maintaining connections that aren’t being used.”

Encouraging reflection

Under pressure from critics, generative AI developers have begun building so-called “Socratic” functions into their models, which for now remain mostly aimed at students.

In this mode, chatbots do not simply provide the answer, instead offering hints and asking questions to stimulate users’ thinking.

Examples include the “study mode” built into OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or “guided learning” in Google’s Gemini.

US software giant Microsoft told AFP it had built warnings about the risk of mistakes into its Copilot models.

The AI also reminds users to check the information it provides, just one of several measures designed to keep them actively and critically engaged with its responses.

“The risk of excessive cognitive offloading is real, especially if AI is used to automate tasks that are also valuable for developing skills,” Microsoft said, adding that users have to be trained to use the tools correctly.

For now, there is a lack of large-scale, long-term studies to judge the true impact of the new technology on human brains, researchers agreed.

Until they are available, “it’s up to us to use AI in a smart way”, Chevalere said. “We’ll adapt to this technological revolution just as we have to the previous ones”.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

PAKISTAN

Flooded Frontline communities face longer wait for funds

Zaki Abbas 

July 16, 2026 

DAWN

A girl carries her sibling as she walks through stranded flood water in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Nowshera on Sept 4, following rains and floods during the monsoon season. — Reuters

• FRLD board defers funding decisions till December, receives 176 requests from 119 states

• Pakistan submits three proposals on agriculture, health, flash flood losses

• Civil society concerned over ‘lack of transparency’, red tape

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and other climate-vulnerable countries will have to wait longer for disbursements from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) after its board decided to allow more time to assess an overwhelming number of funding proposals amid limited financial resources.

The ninth meeting of the FRLD Board, held in Manila from July 8 to 10, ended without making any significant headway — a development that drew criticism from civil society groups, which said the Fund was failing vulnerable communities increasingly expo­sed to climate-related disasters.

The Fund was established at COP27 in Egypt in 2022. A decision to operationalise it was taken at COP28 in Dubai, followed by its full operationalisation at COP29 in Azerb­aijan. With nearly $500m in its account, the Fund launched its first call for proposals at COP30 in Brazil.



The call resulted in 176 funding requests from 119 developing countries, with a combined funding demand of $2.8 billion — more than 11 times the $250 million allocated for disbursement, according to the Fill the Fund civil society group. The average amount requested per proposal is about $15.9m, ranging from $5m to $20m, according to an FRLD document.

At the Manila meeting, the board had been expected to consider proposals from Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria and Ivory Coast to determine their funding requests and establish procedures for future grants. However, the decision has now been deferred until December 2026 because a large number of proposals have yet to be reviewed.

Civil society activist and Fill the Fund campaign member Harjeet Singh said the four proposals alone accounted for about 30 per cent of the initial $250m allocation. The board, he said, was “hesitant to give away such an amount of money without looking at the full basket of proposals”.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the board had intended to review and approve the four proposals to streamline its approval and disbursement procedures. However, a final decision was deferred because the vast majority of the 176 submissions had not yet undergone review.

“June 15 was the deadline for submissions, and on that day alone the board received almost 100 requests,” said Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, Pakistan’s rep­r­e­sentative on the FRLD Board.


At present, only a handful of proposals have undergone an initial review, he said, adding that the board hopes to assess about two-thirds of the proposals by December before beginning disbursements. He said it was expected that around a dozen funding requests would be approved at the 10th board meeting, particularly if an additional $100m was added to the funding pool.

The projects will be approved under the two-year pilot phase, known as the Barbados Implementation Mechanism (BIM), for which $250m has been allocated.

However, less than $500m has actually been received by the Fund to date, according to Brandon Wu, who oversees policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA.

In a statement, the Fill the Fund campaign said the $342m “now allocated to the BIM will still only

cover 12pc of the $2.8bn requested, funding at most approximately 22 funding requests at an average of $15m per request”.

Three Pakistani proposals


Pakistan, which frequently experiences devastating floods and heatwaves, has also submitted three proposals to the FRLD. Official sources told Dawn that one proposal had completed peer review and the country had received encouraging feedback, while comments on a second proposal for climate-resilient health systems in Balochistan were still awaited.

According to FRLD documents, Pakistan’s three-year projects include Responding to Unavoidable Climate Impacts through Recovery and Systems Strengthening, which seeks $20m through its implementing partner, UNDP.

Another proposal, Climate-Resilient Health Systems for Vulnerable Communities in Pakistan — a Balochistan-focused project, according to sources — seeks an $18m grant through the WHO.


The third proposal, which does not list an implementing partner, but seeks $20m for the Compensation and Rehabilitation of Private Fish Farms and Public Sector Fish Hatcheries Damaged in the Recent Rounds of Flash Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Sources acknowledged the funding constraints facing both the board and the FRLD Secretariat but expressed hope that Pakistan would secure funding for at least one of the three projects.

Meanwhile, civil society groups criticised the board on several fronts beyond the delay in approving funding.

Fill the Fund campaign said the crucial Resource Mobilisation Strategy had been deferred until December, leaving the Fund without a clear timeline or targets to mobilise the estimated $400 billion required annually. It also said unresolved issues related to the World Bank’s hosting arrangements continued to hamper the Fund’s ability to operate efficiently and disburse money quickly to frontline communities — problems that one board member described as “teething problems”.

The campaign further criticised restrictions on observer participation, saying its members had been excluded from several closed-door sessions during the board meeting.

In a comment, Singh said the board “must urgently break free from institutional roadblocks and immediately mobilise the hundreds of billions of dollars”; otherwise, it would remain “nothing more than an empty, broken promise”.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

PAKISTAN

PMA issues red alert over 651,000 zero-dose children

The Newspaper's Staff Reporter 

 July 16, 2026 

DAWN

• Declares immunisation gap a national public health emergency

• Blames governance failures, corruption, weak immunisation system

• Calls for an immediate audit of provincial health funds

KARACHI: The Pakistan Medical Association has issued an urgent national red alert after clinical and epidemiological data revealed that Pakistan holds a catastrophically high volume of “zero-dose” children in the World Health Organisation’s Eastern Mediterranean Region.

Zero-dose children are those who have not received the first dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis-containing vaccine (DTP1).

With 651,000 infants completely bypassed by routine immunisation systems, the representative body of the medical fraternity warns that the country is sitting on an epidemiological powder keg, facing an imminent, large-scale resurgence of preventable childhood mortality.

The association formally declared the milestone a National Public Health Emergency, warning that the immunity gap has breached the threshold required to maintain herd immunity, exposing the entire region to uncontrolled outbreaks.

“From a clinical and public health perspective, the presence of over half a million zero-dose children represents a systemic collapse of primary preventive healthcare,” PMA Secretary-General Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro said.


“Behind these devastating figures lies a deeper, systemic rot that has hollowed out the nation’s healthcare framework.”

According to the latest WHO regional epidemiological data, 90pc of all zero-dose children in the region are concentrated in five countries: Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.

While Sudan, Yemen and Somalia are grappling with active wars, extreme violence or total state collapse, Pakistan’s inclusion in this bracket is primarily driven by administrative negligence and governance failure.

“For a non-conflict nation to harbor 14pc of the entire region’s zero-dose children is an unacceptable failure of governance,” Shoro said.

The PMA pointed to critical failures and structural corruption contributing to the crisis.

These include nepotism in administrative appointments, weakened Expanded Programme on Immunisation frameworks, chronic failure to establish secure networks to reach remote territories, and a failure to proactively counter vaccine hesitancy.

“Accumulating 651,000 zero-dose children is a direct consequence of decades of corrupt practices, administrative neglect, and a complete lack of political will from successive governments who do not prioritise the health of this nation,” the PMA stated.

To combat the crisis, the association demanded an audit of all funds allocated to provincial EPI and health departments, ensuring financial transparency, eliminating kickbacks in procurement and holding negligent administrators accountable.

The PMA also demanded that provincial and federal leadership declare routine immunisation a non-negotiable national security priority. It called for utilising localised, GIS-mapped demographic data to track down and inoculate the missing children, prioritising high-risk districts.

Additionally, the association urged modernising vaccine supply chains to prevent thermal degradation, rectifying delayed payments, and providing competitive compensation, rigorous clinical training, and robust security protocols for frontline health workers delivering care.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

 

Why there is no lawyers’ movement in Pakistan today

In 2007, live television turned a sacked chief justice into a national uprising that ended Gen Musharraf’s rule. A lawyer who marched then, and resigned from the Supreme Court in protest last year, explains why that isn’t happening now.

Athar Minallah 

Published July 13, 2026  

The Lawyers’ Movement of 2007-2009 is considered one of the most significant episodes of civic mobilisation in the country’s history. What began as a dispute over the suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan evolved into a nationwide campaign to challenge Gen Musharraf’s rule.

The reinstatement of a handful of deposed judges was symbolic. Its true importance lay in restoring the Constitution, ending a decade of dictatorship, facilitating the return to democratic governance, and reaffirming the principle that political authority must derive from the will of the people, rather than from unelected centres of power.

The conventional explanation given for the movement’s success focuses on lawyers, judges, and political parties. All three groups played a role, but this reasoning overlooks a fundamental factor: the movement’s ability to transform a constitutional dispute into a compelling national narrative.

Understanding why that happened explains why no comparable lawyers’ movement exists today, despite continuing debates about constitutionalism, judicial independence, and the rule of law.

When it began, of course, the 2007 Lawyers’ Movement was hardly a mass uprising. In those days, most Pakistanis had little direct engagement with judicial politics. The turning point came when private television channels began providing continuous live coverage of protests, court proceedings, and political developments. For days, weeks, and months, prominent lawyers such as Aitzaz Ahsan, Muneer Malik, Hamid Khan, Tariq Mehmud, and Ali Ahmad Kurd addressed audiences live on television, openly challenging the authority of Gen Pervez Musharraf, who simultaneously held the offices of president and chief of army staff. He had underestimated the impact of live visuals.

This was unprecedented. Millions of Pakistanis watched lawyers criticise the country’s most powerful institutions in realtime. Rallies, arrests, police actions, and courtroom developments were broadcast live, transforming what might otherwise have remained a professional dispute on a national political cause.

The significance of this media environment cannot be overstated. Political movements succeed not simply because grievances exist, but because they become visible, shared, and emotionally resonant. Live television allowed citizens to witness events as they unfolded, turning isolated protests into a national conversation. Images of the chief justice being manhandled by police, unarmed lawyers in their black coats resisting arrest, the violence in Karachi on May 12, 2007, and, later that same evening, Gen Musharraf displaying his arrogance by raising his fists and declaring victory, transformed a constitutional dispute into a moral drama that was beamed into millions of living rooms.

An often-overlooked aspect of the movement is that, in its initial months, the judiciary itself did not immediately emerge as a united institution of resistance. Following the chief justice’s suspension in March 2007, judges continued functioning within the existing judicial framework. Between March and November, however, the movement gathered extraordinary momentum through relentless media coverage and sustained public mobilisation. Twenty-four-hour television transformed lawyers into national figures and judicial independence into the defining constitutional issue of the day. As public support intensified, judges increasingly found themselves at the centre of a national constitutional struggle. When emergency rule was imposed in November 2007 and judges were required to take the oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order, many refused. By then, they understood that they would be seen as villains if they joined the other side.

The movement also arrived at a particular time within the broader political context. By 2007, Pakistan had experienced almost a decade of Gen Musharraf’s rule, for which public fatigue had become increasingly evident. Many Pakistanis, irrespective of political affiliation, were thus receptive to demands for constitutional restoration and democratic change. Gen Musharraf had also largely lost the support of key foreign allies, many of whom appeared to believe that their principal strategic interests had already been secured.

A further important factor was the alignment of political parties. All major political parties eventually converged on a shared minimum demand: restoration of the judiciary and genuine democracy. Their common objective of restoring democracy transformed what began as a professional protest into a broad constitutional movement and greatly facilitated mass mobilisation. The violence of May 12, 2007 and its visuals telecast live further alienated the few political parties that continued to support Gen Musharraf, deepening his political isolation.

Today, the political landscape is markedly different. Except for one major political party, most others are perceived to have accommodated themselves to prevailing centres of power, weakening their capacity to serve as independent drivers of constitutional and democratic mobilisation. The principal opposition party, despite commanding substantial public support, is widely seen as politically and organisationally constrained. Its leadership remains incarcerated, its organisational structure fragmented, and its ability to act as a unifying national force significantly diminished. There is a widespread perception that recent constitutional and legal changes, including the 26th and 27th Amendments, have further strengthened the coercive apparatus. Unlike in 2007–09, there is no unified political front capable of reinforcing or amplifying a nationwide constitutional movement.

Youth and young lawyers also played a critical role. Senior leaders themselves were committed and led by the idealism of the young, whose determination discouraged compromise at crucial moments. Thousands of younger lawyers organised rallies, travelled across cities, and maintained the movement’s momentum for nearly two years. Effective movements require leadership, but they also depend upon committed participants willing to assume personal risk.

Equally important was the culture of the legal profession. Before the Lawyers’ Movement, bar associations functioned differently. Although elections were contested, they were generally fought over professional integrity, institutional independence, and the welfare of the legal profession rather than overt partisan loyalties. The organised bar retained a strong institutional identity rooted in constitutionalism and the defence of judicial independence.

The establishment had also not regarded the organised legal profession as a significant political challenge. Consequently, it had made relatively few inroads into the internal politics of bar associations. When the confrontation over the judiciary emerged, the bars were therefore able to respond with unusual unity and institutional coherence.

Slogans amplified mobilisation. Demands such as Dastoor ki baladasti (supremacy of the Constitution) and Adliya ki bahali (restoration of the judiciary) were accompanied by more emotive expressions such as Riyasat hogi maa ke jaisi (the state will be like a mother). Crowds openly chanted slogans directed at the dictator’s regime, and these scenes were broadcast live by private television channels into millions of homes. The fact that such slogans could be aired live on national television was itself extraordinary. Together, these broadcasts transformed constitutional language, political dissent, and public protest into a vocabulary that ordinary citizens could understand, identify with, and embrace.

The movement combined grievance with hope. While opposing undemocratic rule, it presented an aspirational vision of justice, constitutionalism, and dignity. That combination enabled it to resonate far beyond lawyers and political elites.

The absence of a comparable lawyers’ movement today reflects the disappearance of many of these conditions. Contemporary Pakistan differs fundamentally from the environment that existed between 2007 and 2009.

The most obvious difference is the media landscape. During the movement, private television channels powerfully amplified dissent. The same channels that broadcast lengthy speeches against a sitting general and provided uninterrupted coverage of anti-establishment protests are now widely perceived to operate within much narrower limits.

Whether due to formal restrictions, informal pressures, commercial considerations, or self-censorship, sustained live broadcasts openly challenging powerful institutions have become almost unimaginable on mainstream private television. Equally important is the perception that the media’s institutional role has changed. During the lawyers movement, many journalists regarded themselves as participants in a broader struggle for constitutionalism and media freedom. Today, that visible institutional resistance is far less apparent. The institution that once helped construct a national narrative of resistance is now widely seen as less able to perform that function.

This matters because movements depend upon visibility. Without shared public exposure, grievances remain fragmented and rarely develop into collective causes.

A climate of fear has increased the perceived cost of mobilisation. Reports of pressure, restrictions on dissent, and intimidation have reinforced the perception that political participation carries greater personal risk, making collective action considerably more difficult. The authority meant to serve the people is instead perceived as being used to silence them.

The legal profession has also undergone profound change. The unity that once characterised the bar associations is no longer evident. Many observers argue that bar politics has become increasingly shaped by partisan affiliations and factional interests rather than shared institutional principles. Over the past two decades, the establishment has also had considerably more opportunity to cultivate influence within a range of institutions, including segments of the legal profession.

Perhaps the most significant change lies within the bars themselves. It is no secret that many lawyers privately acknowledge what they regard as a serious erosion of the rule of law and judicial independence. Many believe that the judiciary has become increasingly subject to the influence of unelected power centres, often acting through the constitutional façade of an elected parliament. Yet these concerns have rarely translated into sustained institutional resistance. Instead, there appears to be a degree of resignation — and, in some quarters, tacit acceptance — that this is now the prevailing constitutional order. The reality may be widely understood within the profession, but few institutional voices are prepared to challenge it publicly.

Cases involving lawyers such as Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha are frequently cited in this context. The muted response from representative legal bodies manifests the difference between today and the collective activism displayed during the Lawyers’ Movement.

There is another, perhaps more ironic, reason why the public is reluctant to place the same trust in judges and lawyers today. The success of the Movement raised immense public expectations that the restored judges and lawyers would fulfil their promise of making the Riyasat like a mother for its people. Regrettably, many believe those expectations were not met. The judges and lawyers became the principal beneficiaries of a struggle sustained by the sacrifices of ordinary citizens. The ninety innocent lives lost during the movement were gradually forgotten, while the idealism of countless young lawyers was left frustrated.

Instead of using the opportunity to transform the justice system, particularly at the district level where ordinary citizens seek justice, the restored judiciary was widely perceived to have reverted to many of the same institutional practices that had existed before the movement. Genuine reform, made possible by the extraordinary public support for the judiciary, never materialised. For the common citizen, little changed. That disappointment has inevitably weakened public trust in both judges and lawyers.

The broader lesson extends beyond Pakistan. Political movements are rarely driven by facts alone. They depend upon narrative, visibility, organisational cohesion, favourable political conditions, and emotional resonance. The Lawyers’ Movement succeeded not simply because lawyers protested or judges were restored, but because it transformed judicial independence from an abstract legal issue into a compelling national story that millions of Pakistanis could identify with.

Today, nearly every condition that made that transformation possible has changed. The media no longer possesses the same freedom to amplify dissent, bar associations are more fragmented and increasingly shaped by partisan politics, collective institutional resistance has weakened, and political parties no longer provide a unified constitutional platform. Constitutional concerns remain, but the institutional and political ecosystem that once transformed those concerns into a nationwide movement no longer exists.

Throughout history, lasting constitutional transformation has been brought about by political leadership rather than by judges or generals. The Lawyers’ Movement was never merely about restoring a handful of judges to office. Its larger purpose was the restoration of the Constitution, democracy, and the principle that the will of the people must prevail.

It was the political leadership—not judges or lawyers—that ultimately had to make the Constitution work in letter and spirit. For more than seven decades, Pakistan has witnessed repeated cycles in which political leaders aligned themselves with centres of power, celebrating when their opponents became victims, only to forget their own persecution when they later returned to office with the support of those very centres of power. In the end, it has always been the will of the people that has suffered.

The Lawyers’ Movement succeeded because, at that historic moment, political leadership demonstrated the resolve to honour the Charter of Democracy. That spirit created the possibility of building a state that cared for every citizen, especially the weakest and most vulnerable.

The success of the Lawyers’ Movement is too often measured by the restoration of the deposed judges rather than by its far greater achievement: ending nearly a decade of Gen Musharraf’s rule and paving the way for the restoration of constitutional democracy through a freely elected parliament after the unprecedented mass mobilisation that culminated in the 2008 general elections. The reinstatement of the judges was largely symbolic. Ironically, the restored judges were later widely perceived as contributing to the weakening of the very parliament that represented the movement’s greatest constitutional success. That role, however, deserves separate discussion.

Today, the reality is widely recognised. Regrettably, political leaders who have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution now openly take pride in governance through a hybrid system rather than under the Constitution itself. The greatest responsibility, therefore, rests with the political leadership because it has voluntarily assumed the duty of leading the nation.

What Pakistan needs today is not another Lawyers’ Movement but the collective spirit that once united political leaders, judges, lawyers, journalists, the media, civil society, and ordinary citizens. It needs a movement to make the Riyasat a mother for every citizen, to break the shackles of elite capture, restore the supremacy of the Constitution, and ensure that the will of the people alone governs the country.

It is time for truth and reconciliation. The choice is clear: continue repeating the failures of the past, or finally learn from our mistakes, honour the constitutional promise made to the people, and build a state governed, in both letter and spirit, by the will of its actual stakeholders — the people.

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Header image: Pakistani riot police confront lawyers during a protest in Lahore in November 2007. — AFP