Asia

Based on the analysis of Pakistan’s current environmental and economic state, the paper outlines concrete challenges caused by climate change. Pakistan, as a developing country, has higher incidences of poverty and the country is facing a number of problems.

In order to introduce and discuss the latest publication: “Pakistan - Reality, Denial and the Complexity of its State” the HBS Head Office in Berlin organized an Expert’s Round Table.

Presently, more than seventy thousand American and NATO troops are in Afghanistan. In addition, Pakistan has deployed more than hundred thousand troops in the tribal areas, adjacent to the Pak-Afghan border, to stop the infiltration of the Taliban and their supporters into Afghanistan. But no significant achievement is in sight. Interestingly, both Pakistan and Afghanistan are blaming each other of not doing sufficient to curb the militancy in the region.

This paper analyzes the outlook of democracy and rule of law in Pakistan, as promoted by the Pakistani Lawyer’s Movement.

Due to the offensive by the military only a few weeks ago, Pakistan came into the focus of the international public again. The power of the Taliban in connection with the attitude of the society was widely discussed, but once again gender and women issues were not highlighted. Durre Ahmed, chairperson and senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Gender and Culture in Lahore, about the current situation and development of the gender discourse in Pakistan.

The American-led NATO mission in Afghanistan began with the stated objective of denying Al Qaeda a safe haven. President Barack Obama restated that in his speech at West Point earlier this month that the overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and its allies in the future. “We are in Afghanistan to prevent cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan.”

Several research studies conducted in the areas of peace, conflict and wars across the world show that not only the impact but the perceptions and perspectives of men and women of conflicts are also fairly gendered In general, women are perceived as passive victims of wars/ conflicts who do not play any active role in initiating or participating in wars and conflicts. However, there are plenty of examples that show that women are not only the victim of wars and conflicts but they also play an active role as combatants and supporters of wars and political violence.

Highly innovative and stimulating: this book provides a wide range of developmental perspectives to the study of student politics in Pakistan – a clear departure from traditional examination limited to political and ideological contexts of student action in campuses.

The three topics Democracy, Traditions, and Gender are strongly interrelated. Thus the conference offered various representatives of the civil society from South and West Asia to discuss always two of these topics through the lens of the third one.

Violence against women is not confined to our country alone but its prevalence is evident across the world. Violence against women is a phenomenon that takes several identifiable forms and cuts across national, ethnic and social backgrounds. In Pakistan certain social precedents, call them customs or traditions justify acts of torture, violence, and murder infused with a sense of righteous pride. The worst of such customs is that of so-called ‘honour’ killings. In Baluchistan, the act of ‘honour’ killings is termed siyahkari, karo kari in Sindh, in NWFP tor tora, and kala kali in the Punjab. Shirkat Gah wants to shed some more light on what this issue entails and why it continues to persist. We also want to determine the type of action that can most effectively be initiated against it. We hope that by the end of this seminar some recommendations and suggestions will emerge that can provide further guidance in this regard.