Women's Action Forum - 25th Anniversary

25th Anniversary

November 5 marks the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) in Pakistan. According to a Dawn report about the WAF silver jubilee:

All three chapters of the WAF, Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, gathered in Lahore to celebrate 25 years of the founding of the forum, the women’s rights organisation working in close collaboration with other civil society and democratic forces to defend the rights of women and all oppressed and marginalised sections of society…. These and hundreds of other, anonymous, women pioneers representing the struggle by civil society against the forces of obscurantism broke the ice at a time when chilly winds blew across the country, freezing even the few men who dared to speak up in their tracks, as efforts were being made by the dictatorial regime of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq to further gag the women, the minorities and the democratic voices.

The defunct student and trade unions and the harassed political activists later joined the struggle led by the show of courage that these brave women put up against what they saw as distortion of the social order and dreams of an emancipated society that Pakistanis from all religious, ethnic and economic backgrounds had long cherished. The Women’s Action Forum emerged on the scene as a vanguard of a movement that defied General Zia’s martial law and its torturous tactics. On Feb 12, 1983, the WAF along with the Pakistan Women Lawyers’ Association took out a public rally against the Law of Evidence on The Mall, Lahore, which came under brutal police attack. The late poet Habib Jalib was prevailed upon to rally the women demonstrators with his rebel-rousing poetry before being beaten by the police. This was a turning point in the gathering of democratic forces against military dictatorship.

On September 16, silver jubilee celebrations of WAF were held at the Karachi Press Club. It was a colourful affair of skits, song and dance.