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Pakistan doesn’t enjoy an enviable status in international rankings on the treatment of women and minorities. For example, in 2024, in the Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum, Pakistan ranks 145th out of 146 countries. Similarly, national and international agencies monitoring treatment meted out to religious minorities also paint a rather bleak picture.

If one asks what’s one of the most burning constitutional and political issues being debated in parliament and the judiciary in Pakistan these days, the answer invariably points to the controversy on allocation of seats reserved for women and non-Muslims in the national and provincial assemblies.

Although women and non-Muslims are free to contest election on the general seats like anybody else, the Pakistani constitution provides that about 18 percent and 3 percent of the total seats in the assemblies be reserved for women and non-Muslims respectively, in view of the gross under representation the two segments of the population in the assemblies.

Pakistani state institutions including parliament and judiciary should promptly find a resolution to the issue from a human rights perspective.

- Ahmed Bilal Mehboob

This quota for women and........

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