ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Human Rights Federal Secretary Rabiya Javeri Agha has said that keeping in view the cross-cutting nature of inheritance-related issues, coordinated efforts of various social sector federal ministries and provincial departments are imperative to ensure women’s right to inheritance in the country.
These views were by the federal minister while chairing the meeting of federal and provincial stakeholders on women’s rights that was reviewing the matter of inheritance here on Wednesday.
She highlighted social and cultural issues restricting women to get their due share in the inherited property and stressed to take short-term and long-term measures, including registration of births, deaths and marriages, awareness raising to change the mindset, and amendment in laws.
Representatives of relevant provincial and federal governments, International Cooperation director general (DG) and the Human Rights DG attended the meeting.
The International Cooperation DG briefed the participants about the issue of women’s right to inheritance. He shared key points of the proposed actions including the review of laws to identify gaps, the establishment of federal and provincial task forces and awareness raising mechanisms. A set of questions seeking the input of participants was also shared to come up with possible solutions.
The meeting discussed various issues and mechanisms with regard to the transfer of inheritance to women. In this regard, the participants of the meeting gave their input to address the bottlenecks and hurdles with possible solutions while keeping the ground realities in mind. The participants were asked to furnish their responses in writing to the Ministry of Human Rights.
After thorough deliberations, various proposals and suggestions were given by the participants to remove the hurdles being faced while transferring the due share of inheritance to women.
The main recommendations include launching a large-scale awareness campaign to change the mindset at societal level both in urban and rural areas, motivation to ensure documentation through registration of births and deaths as well as, nikah nama/B-Form, recruitment of female staff at Union Council level, and the involvement of the Women Parliamentary Caucus (WPC) and village councils at grassroots level.
The representative of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) also mentioned two key recommendations i.e. division of inherited property among the legal heirs as per Islamic law, in case of Hiba and the addition of two columns in a death certificate indicating details of movable and immovable property of the deceased along with the names of legal heirs.