| I'm sure the Paks will get right on this... |
Expressing concern about women's position in Pakistan, the European Union has asked the government to immediately repeal discriminatory provisions in the Hudood, Blasphemy, Qisas and Diyat laws. "The abolition of discriminatory laws will help improve women's situation in Pakistan," said an European Union Presidency statement released at the Pakistan Development Forum on Tuesday. However, the EU welcomed the Pakistani government's ongoing gender responsive budgeting pilot programme suggesting it become a standard planning principle in Pakistan's Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF). The EU expressed concern about the MTDF saying it did not address the risk of growing inequality in Pakistan. "Experiences have shown that macro-economic growth by itself does not necessarily lead to reduction in poverty," the statement said adding that Pakistan needed a better plan to achieve the MTDF. It said the MTDF and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) should be united and an independent statistical system must be set up because the statistics of government institutions about poverty figures were not reliable. "More targeted interventions are needed to allow the poor to participate in and thereby help sustain economic growth," the EU statement said. |