People's assemblies in Pakistani villages, organized by Action Aid Pakistan, serve as an important forum for people to gather and discuss their problems within the community and with government stake holders and find ways and means to resolve these issues. Javed Soz Halai from Green Rural Development Organization (Action Aid partner) reports about one such people's assembly organized in September 2005, at Khairpur district in Sindh.

With the help of its partner Lyari Development Organization, Action Aid Pakistan (AAPK) organized a people's assembly in Khairpur district on September 17, 2005, with more than 1000 members of the community, from different strata of society attending. Government stake holders and socio political analysts. The aim of this assembly, as stated by Adm Malik (AAPK), was to provide a united platform between people and the administration, so that real problems faced by the communities can be identified and proper solutions to them can be found.

This assembly saw a lot of debate and discussion, with active participation from women of the community. Issues specific to women were raised, including
• Lack of basic infrastructure for emergency obstetric facilities in the district and no transport facilities in cases of obstetric emergencies, resulting in increasing deaths of pregnant women
• Lack of primary schools in remote rural areas and lack of basic facilities like toilets for girls, boundary walls for girls' schools
• Political interference in schools, irregularity of teachers
• Low literacy among adults
• Unemployment, resulting poverty and the adverse effects of these on the community, especially on women
• Unavailability of safe drinking water in the most villages of the district

Most of the issues raised have been there for many years now, but what was notable about this assembly was the active participation of women in discussing these issues openly and liberally. Dr. Tahira Khan, Area Manager Karachi of AAPK, encouraged the women to be aware about their basic rights, and speak up abut their problems, so that the elected representatives could help solve them. Murad Khatoon, a16 year old girl teaching in a non formal school run by an NGO in one of the villages, related how her complaints of sexual harassment and attempts of rape against one of the Shah family members, to the SoobhoDero police station have resulted in no enquiries or arrest. She requested the assembly members to help her get justice.

The assembly participants voted and passed resolutions to
• Stop violence against women by proper implementation of the law about honour killing
• Equip primary schools with computers, build physical infrastructure and toilets for girls' primary schools in remote areas. The District Literacy Officer ensured that he will initiate programs to help these resolutions and to resolve the issue of shortage of teachers in schools.
• Allocate resources for establishing health centres focused on reducing MMR
• Utilise district government funds for making stable schemes for community development, with the help of CCBs and NGOs
• Provide safe drinking water to the community

Action Aid Pakistan also announced that they would provide legal and technical help to Murad Khatoon get justice and negotiate her case with the local stakeholders and judiciary to solve this problem. All participants also staged a demonstration on the main road near the program venue; they were chanting jargons against the SHO of SoobhoDero Police station for not taking of action against the sex crime offender.

The assembly ended with a street play that illustrated the indebtedness of the labor involved in Dates fruit, gender discrimination, and attitude of government official towards the severity of problems and a denouncement of President Musharraf's remarks on Pakistani women and demand that he retract his statement.

At the end of the event, Speaker of Assembly, socio political analyst Mr. Jami Chandio demanded that the issues brought up by this assembly be documented and shared with the relevant departments and officials for its proper and stable solution in the interest of people and urged the community to continually be aware of their rights and of their responsibilities to pursue these proceedings.

He spoke of how unfortunate it was that people of Pakistan have been afraid to raise their voice for their basic rights, and how they have been unaware about the might of their rights. Assemblies such as these, where people have been able to speak and present their local problems, were a great pleasure to be part of and are indicators of real social change.
reported by Javed Soz Halai –GRDO

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