AGHS celebrates International Women’s Day

In order to commemorate the achievements of women in political, social, economic arenas, AGHS Legal Aid Cell celebrated the International Women’s Day with the team members of their paralegal training project here on Tuesday.

On the occasion, talking about the challenges faced by women, AGHS Director and rights activist Asma Jahangir said, ‘Women have advanced but not enough to meet the challenges of the world that is turning more conservative. There is dire need to give them more awareness regarding their rights.”

Talking to journalists, AGHS Legal Aid Cell media officer Amina Hassan said that the purpose of celebrating International Women’s Day with our paralegal team was to make them aware about the importance of such training programs on broader perspective. ‘These women are here from different backgrounds so there awareness regarding their own rights is imperative and difficult too’.

Amina said that every year AGHS Legal Aid cell gave education of subsidiary legal matters to more than 120 women. In this paralegal training program, AGHS provided training and awareness to the women from different walks of life. These paralegal women were health workers, homeopathic doctors, students and other field workers.

“The agenda behind their selection is to select a woman which can give further paralegal training to other community women,” said Amina.

She added that this year AGHS welcomed more than 120 members to its paralegal team. Out of these 120 members, along with 90 women, 30 men were also included in this training program. This change in the project envisaged to give awareness to men of society regarding women laws and to sensitize men too regarding gender discrimination in the society.

Paralegal Field Officer Rahat Gull said that in this paralegal project, AGHS also took their paralegal team members to shelter homes, lady police stations and court to get better understanding towards the laws regarding violence and harassment against women, inheritance laws, laws regarding marriage and divorce – all those laws which were created to protect the rights of women. “We are taking all the steps to ensure women empowerment in the country,” said Rahat.

Paralegal Training Director Aimen Bucha said that women’s empowerment could be achieved through awareness building and political action. Organizing women was an imperative for ensuring a potent fight for the rights of women.