ISLAMABAD – Notwithstanding the large number of women parliamentarians, “Acid Control and Burn Crime Prevention Bill 2010” tabled by Marvi Memon in National Assembly a year ago to address the vital issue of acid violence in Pakistan is still pending approval.
The bill is aimed at controlling the import, production, transportation, boarding, sale, and use of acid to prevent its misuse as a corrosive substance and to provide legal support to acid and burn victims. With approval of Marvi’s bill not in sight despite the lapse of months, a draft of another acid violence bill was prepared on June 24, 2010 by the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNIFEM).
The bill was formulated by Ministry of Women Development (MoWD) in collaboration with these organizations. Several consultation workshops and meetings were arranged and held to finalize the draft. All that, however, proved a fruitless exercise as the new acid violence bill is also pending but this time with the Ministry of Women Development and not the parliament.
Hence, no legislation on the contentious issue of acid violence can be expected in the coming future. Every year thousands of Pakistanis, majority of which are women, fall victim to acid and other burn attacks. The attacks, typically to the face, gruesomely disfigure the victim and can lead to serious infections, disabilities and ostracism by family and community.
According to statistics, 46 percent of the acid violence victims are women, 36 percent men and the remaining are children. The victims of acid burns not only suffer physical and medical complications but also experience psychological trauma. While talking to ‘Pakistan Today’, Rukhsana Shamma, women rights officer at Actionaid, an NGO, said that acid attack was a vicious and damaging form of violence, which caused the skin tissues to melt, often exposing the bones below the flesh, sometimes even dissolving the bone.
“Subsequently, the survivors of such attacks undergo a lengthy process of surgical treatment and psychological rehabilitation,” she said. An eighteen year-old acid survivor girl, who wished not to be named sharing her ordeal with Pakistan Today said that at the age of 8, she became victim of a horrific acid attack last year. She said it happened after her family refused a wedding proposal from one, Arshad, for her elder sister. “My family received a number of threats if their demands were not met and they also said that she would not be left in a position to marry any one at all,” she said.
She said that one evening, when her family was having dinner, Arshad and two of his friends, Zahid and Abid came to their house and threw acid on them from over the wall. She said that she and her mother were sitting close to the wall and as a result were burnt the most and later her mother’s burns turned out to be fatal and she passed away. She said she was left to live in a miserable condition without her mother.
