Photo courtesy of Tahir Watto I belong to a marginalized sector of my country where educated women are confined into four walls in rural settings. I was married into a traditional setup: four walls, agricultural land, and an educated husband, that is where my fate changed and my story began. My name is Sahar Iqbal and I am a farmer in Pakpattan, a city in the Southern Punjab province. I started from converting our waterlogged barren land into a productive landscape to provide women who...

Farheen Sarwat, 49, has worked as Senior Emergency Staff Nurse since 1989 at the Holy Family Hospital Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.

A first joint initiative between Pakistan and Afghanistan took place on Thursday 25 August 2016 to assist women during displacement to enhance synergies so regional and provincial responses and coordination mechanisms incorporate women and girls as change agents and promote gender equality commitments in disasters and emergencies. The meeting ‘Pakistan-Afghanistan dialogue on women’s situation in displacement: Challenges and way forward for policy and practice’, was hosted...

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has signed a Letter of Agreement (LoA) with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) through support from United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to strengthen responses with focus on women and issues faced by them during and post disasters. Pakistan has been home to complex emergencies and disasters, which have devastating consequences, including widening of the ‘gender’ gaps between...