Muhammad Hassan Malik

Existing Socio-medico and Legal Supportive Mechanisms to Rape Victims: an Awareness Survey of Punjab University Teachers Muhammad Hassan Malik

It is necessary to provide relief and protection to women against misuse and abuse of law and to prevent their exploitation. The first Bill of Rights for women was laid out (in the Quaranic Chapter on Women Al-Nisa and Other Quaranic Chapters/verses), nearly fourteen hundred years ago. In fact, women's roles and responsibilities as engendered in Islam, accord them a high status in the family and society. For years, women in Pakistan have been severely disadvantaged and discriminated against. They have been denied the enjoyment of a whole range of rights - economic, social, civil and political rights and often deprivation in one of these areas has entailed discrimination in another. Women, who have been denied social rights including the right to education, are more easily abused in the family and community and are more likely to be deprived of the right to legal redress. Often abuses are compounded; poor girls and women are trafficked and subject to forced marriage, forced prostitution or exploitative work situations such as bonded labor. In all of these situations they are likely to be mentally, physically and sexually abused, again without having the wherewithal to obtain justice.