Noor Mukadam Got Justice, But Why Does Pakistan’s Legal System Fail Its Women?

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Gender Violence

Noor Mukadam at a protest outside the Islamabad Press Club, holding a poster demanding justice for a rape survivor. The photo was taken on September 12, 2020. She was murdered by her partner on 20 July 2021. Credit: Shafaq Zaidi

Noor Mukadam at a protest outside the Islamabad Press Club, holding a poster demanding justice for a rape survivor. The photo was taken on September 12, 2020. She was murdered by her partner on 20 July 2021. Credit: Shafaq Zaidi

KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 4 2025 (IPS) – “It’s brought me some closure,” said Shafaq Zaidi, a school friend of Noor Mukadam, reacting to the Supreme Court’s May 20 verdict upholding both the life sentence and death penalty for Noor’s killer, Zahir Jaffer.

“Nothing can bring Noor back, but this decision offers a sense of justice—not just for her, but for every woman in Pakistan who’s been told her life doesn’t matter,” Zaidi told IPS over the phone from Islamabad. “It’s been a long and painful journey—four years of fighting through the sessions court, high court, and finally, the Supreme Court.”

Echoing a similar sentiment, rights activist Zohra Yusuf said, “It’s satisfying that the Supreme Court upheld the verdict,” but added that the crime’s brutality left little room for relief. “It was so horrific that one can’t even celebrate the judgment,” she said, referring to the “extreme” sadism Noor endured—tortured with a knuckleduster, raped, and beheaded with a sharp weapon on July 20, 2021.

Yusuf also pointed out that the “background” of those involved is what drew national attention.

Noor Mukadam, 27, was the daughter of a former ambassador, while Zahir Jaffer, 30, was a dual Pakistan-U.S. national from a wealthy and influential family. Her father and friends fought to keep the case in the public eye, refusing to let it fade into yet another forgotten statistic.

Still, the response has been muted—many, including Yusuf, oppose the death penalty.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded at least 174 death sentences in 2024—a sharp rise from 102 in 2023—yet not a single execution was reportedly carried out. The last known hanging was in 2019, when Imran Ali was executed for the rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Ansari.

However, Noor’s father, Shaukat Ali Mukadam, has repeatedly stated that the death sentence for Zahir Jaffer was “very necessary,” emphasizing, “This isn’t just about my daughter—it’s about all of Pakistan’s daughters,” referencing the countless acts of violence against women that go unpunished every day.

The HRCP’s 2024 annual report painted a grim picture of gender-based violence against women in Pakistan.

According to the National Police Bureau, at least 405 women were killed in so-called honor crimes. Domestic violence remained widespread, resulting in 1,641 murders and over 3,385 reports of physical assault within households.

Sexual violence showed no sign of slowing. Police records documented 4,175 reported rapes, 733 gang rapes, 24 cases of custodial sexual assault, and 117 incidents of incest-related abuse—a chilling reminder of the dangers women face in both public and private spaces. HRCP’s media monitoring also revealed that at least 13 transgender individuals experienced sexual violence—one was even killed by her family in the name of honor.

The digital space offered no refuge either. The Digital Rights Foundation recorded 3,121 cases of cyber-harassment, most reported by women in Punjab.

Justice Remains Elusive

But numbers alone can’t capture the brutality—or the deep-rooted disregard for women that drives it.

“We recently took a man to court and secured maintenance for twin baby girls,” said Haya Zahid, CEO of the Karachi-based Legal Aid Society (LAS). “The father divorced their young mother while she was still in the hospital—just because she gave birth to daughters.”

LAS offers free legal aid to those who can’t afford it, handling cases like rape, murder, acid attacks, forced and child marriages, and domestic violence.

Bassam Dhari, also from LAS, recalled Daya Bheel’s gruesome murder, which took place after Noor Mukadam’s but failed to stir national attention because it happened in a remote village in Sindh’s Sanghar district.

“She was skinned, her eyeballs removed, her breasts chopped off, and her head severed from her body,” said Dhari.

He said the postmortem report confirmed that she was neither raped nor sexually assaulted, and the attack did not appear to be driven by rage or revenge.

While Mukadam’s family may have found closure, justice remains elusive for thousands of Pakistani women.

“Noor Mukadam’s case is indeed a rare instance where justice was served,” said Syeda Bushra, another lawyer at the LAS.

“It’s not that there aren’t enough laws to protect women and children—far from it,” said Bushra. “There are plenty of laws, but what good are they if investigations are weak?” According to her, only a small percentage of women can seek redress. “Justice is denied or delayed every single day,” she added.

“The problem is that these laws are crafted in a social vacuum,” observed Fauzia Yazdani, a gender and governance expert with over 30 years of experience working with national governments, the UN, and bilateral development partners in Pakistan.

She acknowledged that although many progressive, women-friendly laws have been passed over the years, they’ve failed to resonate in a society resistant to change. “Laws are essential, but no amount of legislation can end violence against women if the societal mindset remains misogynistic, patriarchal, and permissive of such crimes,” she said.

Buying Justice Through Blood Money

At the same time, Dahri highlighted critical flaws in the justice system.

In Pakistan, where the death penalty remains legal under its Islamic status, such sentences can be overturned through the diyat (blood money) law, which allows perpetrators to buy forgiveness by compensating the victim’s family.

“In our country, money can buy anything,” said Dahri. “This blood money law is routinely abused by the rich and powerful to literally get away with murder.”

He stressed the urgent need to reform these laws. “Many families initially refuse compensation, but intense pressure and threats—especially against the poor—often force them to give in.”

In 2023, 10-year-old Fatima Furiro’s death might have gone unnoticed if two graphic videos—showing her writhing in pain, then collapsing—hadn’t gone viral. The resulting public outcry led to her body being exhumed. Her employer, a powerful feudal lord in Sindh’s Khairpur district, who appeared in the footage, was swiftly arrested.

He spent a year in prison before the case was closed, after Fatima’s impoverished family accepted blood money—despite forensic evidence confirming she had been raped, beaten, and tortured over time.

Shafaq Zaidi—Noor Mukadam’s school friend—stood outside the Islamabad Press Club on July 25, 2021, at the very spot where Noor had once protested. This time, Zaidi was seeking justice for Noor herself, who had been killed just days earlier, on July 20, 2021. Courtesy: Shafaq Zaidi.

Shafaq Zaidi—Noor Mukadam’s school friend—stood outside the Islamabad Press Club on July 25, 2021, at the very spot where Noor had once protested. This time, Zaidi was seeking justice for Noor herself, who had been killed just days earlier, on July 20, 2021. Courtesy: Shafaq Zaidi

Law vs Prejudice

Alongside a flawed justice system, women must battle deep-rooted social taboos—amplified by relentless victim-blaming and shaming.

“In such an environment,” said Bushra, “it’s no surprise that many women, worn down by the long and exhausting process, eventually withdraw their complaints.”

“A woman’s trial begins long before she ever enters a courtroom,” said Dahri.

In Noor Mukadam’s case, the claim of a “live-in relationship”—real or fabricated—was used by the convict’s lawyer to downgrade his death sentence for rape to life imprisonment.

“A boy and girl living together is a misfortune for our society,” remarked Justice Hashim Kakar, who led the three-member bench hearing Mukadam’s case.

“Her reputation was sullied—even in death,” said Yazdani, adding that judges should refrain from moralizing and preaching.

“A judge’s verdict should rest solely on an impartial reading of the law,” said Bushra.

But as Dahri pointed out, few lawyers in Pakistan dare to say this openly. “Judges can take it personally,” he said, “and we risk facing repercussions in our very next case.”

According to Yazdani, even a few targeted reforms—like faster hearings, clearing case backlogs, setting up GBV and child protection courts, and training judges, lawyers, and police on the realities of misogyny and gender-based violence—could cut victim-blaming in half.

But she also offered a word of caution: reforms alone don’t guarantee empathy, which she called the cornerstone of real justice.

“Social change doesn’t happen overnight,” Yazdani said. “Anthropologically speaking, it takes five years for change to take root—and another ten for it to truly take hold.”

Gender balance matters in justice

Judicial gender inequality worsens the situation. Some experts argue that increasing the number of women judges and lawyers could lead to a more fair, dynamic, and empathetic justice system.

A 2024 report by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) reveals that women make up less than 20 percent of the country’s judges, lawyers, and judicial officers—an alarming gap in a nation of over 117 million women. Of the 126 judges in the superior judiciary, only seven are women—just 5.5 percent. In the Supreme Court, that number drops to two.

Meanwhile, the 26 judges of the apex court (including the chief justice) are burdened with a backlog of more than 56,000 cases—not all related to violence against women.

Bushra believes more women must be encouraged to enter the justice sector—particularly as prosecutors, police officers, and judges. “I’ve seen how distressed victims become when forced to repeat their ordeal to male officers—often multiple times,” she said.

But she emphasized that simply increasing the number of women won’t end victim-blaming or guarantee survivor-centric justice. “Everyone in the system—including women—must be genuinely gender-sensitized to overcome personal biases and deep-rooted stereotypes,” said Bushra.

Special Courts

In 2021, the government passed the Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act, leading to the formation of an anti-rape committee by the Ministry of Law and Justice to support victims, including setting up special courts nationwide. “Special investigation units with trained prosecutors now handle 77 percent of complaints, and 91 percent of cases go to special courts,” said Nida Aly of AGHS, a Lahore-based law firm offering free legal aid and part of the committee.

By 2022, Sindh had set up 382 such units. Aly noted that a survivor-centered, time-bound, and coordinated approach raised conviction rates from 3.5 percent to 5 percent. A national sex offenders registry, managed by police, was launched in 2024. In Punjab, all 36 districts now have crisis and protection centers offering legal and psychosocial support, though some face resource limitations.

Nearly five years after gender-based violence courts were established in Karachi, she sees a promising shift in how judges handle such cases. “Prosecutors now take time to prepare women complainants—something that never happened before,” she said.

However, she added, the number of such courts and sensitized judges remains a drop in the ocean compared to the overwhelming number of violence committed against women and such cases flooding the system across Sindh.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Lawyer-Turned-Activist Bhuwan Ribhu Honored for Leading a Campaign to End Child Marriage

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Active Citizens, Asia-Pacific, Child Labour, Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Editors’ Choice, Education, Featured, Gender, Gender Violence, Headlines, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Humanitarian Emergencies, Latin America & the Caribbean, Sustainable Development Goals, TerraViva United Nations, Women’s Health, Youth

Human Rights

Dominican Republic’s Minister of Labor Eddy Olivares Ortega and Javier Cremades, President of the World Jurist Association, hand the Medal of Honor award to Just Rights for Children founder Bhuwan Ribhu.

Dominican Republic’s Minister of Labor Eddy Olivares Ortega and Javier Cremades, President of the World Jurist Association, hand the Medal of Honor award to Just Rights for Children founder Bhuwan Ribhu.

NEW DELHI, May 6 2025 (IPS) – Bhuwan Ribhu didn’t plan to become a child rights activist. But when he saw how many children in India were being trafficked, abused, and forced into marriage, he knew he couldn’t stay silent.

“It all started with failure,” Ribhu says. “We tried to help, but we weren’t stopping the problem. That’s when I realized—no one group can do this alone. Calling the problem for what it truly is—a criminal justice issue rather than a social justice issue—I knew the solution needed holistic scale.”

Today, Bhuwan Ribhu leads Just Rights for Children—one of the world’s largest networks dedicated to protecting children. In recognition of his relentless efforts to combat child marriage and trafficking, he has just been awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor by the World Jurist Association. The award was presented at the recently concluded World Law Congress in the Dominican Republic.

But for Ribhu, the honor isn’t about recognition. “This is a reminder that the world is watching—and that children are counting on us,” he tells IPS in his first interview after receiving the award.

Looking Back: One Meeting Changed Everything

For Ribhu, a lawyer by profession, it has been a long, arduous, and illustrious journey to getting justice for children. But this long journey began during a meeting of small nonprofits in eastern India’s Jharkhand state, where someone spoke up: “Girls from my village are being taken far away, to Kashmir, and sold into marriage.”

That moment hit Ribhu hard.

“That’s when it struck me—one person or one group can’t solve a problem that crosses state borders,” he says. He then started building a nationwide network.

And just like that, the Child Marriage-Free India (CMFI) campaign was born. Dozens of organizations joined, and the number grew steadily until it reached 262.

So far, more than 260 million people have joined in the campaign, with the Indian government launching Bal Vivah Mukt Bharat—a national mission towards ending child marriage in India.

Across villages, towns, and cities, people are speaking up for a child marriage-free India.

“What used to feel impossible is now within reach,” Ribhu says.

Taking the Fight to Courtrooms

Ribhu is a trained lawyer, and for him, the law is a powerful weapon.

Since 2005, he’s fought—and won—dozens of important cases in Indian courts. These have helped define child trafficking in Indian law; make it mandatory for police to act when children go missing; criminalize child labor; set up support systems for abuse survivors; and remove harmful child sexual abuse content from the internet.

One big success came when the courts accepted that if a child is missing, police should assume they might have been trafficked. This changed everything. Reported missing cases dropped from 117,480 to  67,638 a year.

“That’s what justice in action looks like,” said Ribhu.

Taking Along Religious Leaders

One of the most powerful moves of CMFI was reaching out to religious leaders.

The reason was simple: whatever the religion is, it is the religious leader who conducts a marriage.

“If religious leaders refuse to marry children, the practice will stop,” says Ribhu.

The movement began visiting thousands of villages. They met Hindu priests, Muslim clerics, Christian pastors, and others. They asked them to take a simple pledge: “I will not marry a child, and I will report child marriage if I see it.”

The results have been astonishing: on festivals like Akshaya Tritiya—considered auspicious for weddings—many child marriages used to happen until recently. But temples now refuse to perform them.

“Faith can be a big force for justice,” Ribhu says. “And religious texts support education and protection for children.”

Going Global with a Universal Goal

But the campaign is no longer just India’s story. In January of this year, Nepal, inspired by the campaign, launched its own Child Marriage-Free Nepal initiative with the support of Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli. All the seven provinces of the country have joined it, vowing to take steps to stop child marriage

The campaign has also spread to 39 other countries, including Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where calls for a global child protection legal network are gaining momentum.

“The legal systems of different countries and regions may differ, but justice should be the same everywhere,” says Ribhu, who has also authored two books—Just Rights and When Children Have Children—where he has laid out a legal, institutional, and moral framework to end child exploitation called PICKET. “It’s not just about shouting for change. It’s about building systems that protect children every day,” Ribhu says.

Sacrifices and Hope

Ribhu gave up a promising career in law practice. Many people didn’t understand why.

“People said I was wasting my time,” he remembers. “But one day my son said, ‘Even if you save just one child, it’s worth it.’ That meant everything to me.”

A believer in the idea of Gandhian trusteeship—the belief that we should use our talents and privileges to serve others, especially those who need help the most.

“I may not be the one to fight child marriage in Iraq or Congo. But someone will. And we’ll stand beside them.”

A Powerful Award and a Bigger Mission

The World Jurist Association Medal isn’t just a trophy. For Ribhu, it’s a platform. “It tells the world: This is possible. Change is happening. Let’s join in.”

He also hopes that the award will help his team connect with new partners and expand their work to new regions.

“In 2024 alone, over 2.6 lakhs Child Marriages were prevented and stopped and over 56,000 children were rescued from trafficking and exploitation in India. These numbers show that change is not just a dream—it’s real,” he says.

By 2030, Ribhu hopes to see the number of child marriages in India falling below 5 percent.

But there’s more to do. In some countries, like Iraq, girls can still be married as young as 10, and in the United States, 35 states still allow child marriage under certain conditions.

“Justice can’t be occasional,” Ribhu says. “It must be a part of the system everywhere. We must make sure justice isn’t just a word—it’s a way of life.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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‘The International Response Should Follow the Principle of ‘Nothing about Us, Without Us’’

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Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Europe, Featured, Gender, Gender Violence, Global, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, Labour, Migration & Refugees, Press Freedom, TerraViva United Nations

May 1 2025 (IPS) – CIVICUS speaks with Ukrainian gender rights activist Maryna Rudenko about the gendered impacts of the war in Ukraine and the importance of including women in peacebuilding efforts.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has profoundly impacted on women and girls. Many have been displaced and are struggling with poverty and unemployment. Those who’ve stayed endure daily missile attacks, damaged infrastructure, lack of basic services and sexual violence from Russian forces if they live in occupied territories. Women activists, caregivers and journalists are particularly vulnerable. The international community must increase support to ensure justice for victims and women’s inclusion in peace efforts.

Maryna Rudenko

What have been the impacts of the war in Ukraine, particularly on women and girls?

The war began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, with Indigenous women, particularly Crimean Tatars, immediately and severely affected. They risked losing their property and livelihoods, and to continue working they were forced to change their citizenship. Pro-Ukraine activists had to flee and those who stayed faced arrest. This placed a heavier burden on many women who were left in charge of their families.

At the same time in 2014, Russia began supporting separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, leading to the occupation of territories such as Donetsk and Luhansk and the displacement of over a million people. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, many lost their homes again. Nearly seven million fled to European countries. This population loss poses a significant demographic challenge to Ukraine’s post-war development.

Since 2015, conflict-related sexual violence has been a major issue. Around 342 cases have been documented. The International Criminal Court recognised that conflict-related sexual violence has been committed in the temporarily occupied territories since 2014.

Ukraine also experienced the largest campaign of child abduction in recent history: Russia took close to 20,000 Ukrainian children from occupied territories and sent then to ‘camps’ in Crimea or Russia, where the authorities changed their names and nationalities and gave them to Russian families. Ukrainian children were forced to change their national identity. This is evidence of genocidal approach in Russia’s war activities.

The war has also devastated infrastructure and the economy. In my town, 30 km from Kyiv, the heating station was hit by 11 ballistic missiles, leaving us without electricity or water for a long time. It was very scary to stay at the apartment with my daughter and know that Russian ballistic missiles were flying over our house. Roughly 40 per cent of the economy was destroyed in 2022 alone, causing job losses at a time when the government spends over half its budget on the military. Civilians, including a record 70,000 women, have taken up arms.

Beyond the immediate human cost, the war is causing serious environmental damage, with weapons and missile debris polluting soil and water beyond national borders. Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, poses a very real risk of a nuclear disaster for Ukraine and Europe as a whole.

How have Ukrainian women’s organisations responded?

Starting in 2014, we focused on advocacy, championing United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1,325, which reaffirms the role of women in conflict prevention and resolution. The government adopted its National Action Plan on the implementation of the resolution in 2016. We formed local coalitions to implement this agenda, leading to reforms such as opening military roles to women, establishing policies to prevent sexual harassment, integrating gender equality in the training curriculum and gender mainstreaming as part of police reform.

Following the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian women’s civil society organisations (CSOs) shifted to providing immediate humanitarian relief, as survival became the top priority. Women’s CSOs began helping people, particularly those with disabilities, relocate to western Ukraine and providing direct aid to those who remained. As schools, hospitals and shelters for survivors of domestic violence were destroyed, women’s CSOs tried to fill the gap, providing food, hygiene packages and cash and improvising school lessons in metro tunnels.

People stood up and helped. In Kharkiv, which is located 30 km from the boarder with Russia, the local government created underground schools. It’s unbelievable that this happened in the 21st century and because of the aggression of a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Our children, women and men can’t sleep normally because every night there are missile and drone attacks.

In the second half of 2022, women’s CSOs and the government tried to refocus on long-term development. One of the first initiatives was to amend the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security to better address conflict-related sexual violence in both occupied and liberated areas. This was a much-needed response given the many reported cases of killing, rape and torture. This involved training law enforcement officers, prosecutors and other officials on how to document these crimes and properly communicate with survivors, who often blame themselves due to stigma surrounding the violence.

We have also reported Russia’s violations of the Geneva Conventions, particularly those concerning women, to UN human rights bodies.

Women’s groups are pushing for more donor support for psychological services to address trauma and helping plan for long-term recovery, aiming to rebuild damaged infrastructure and improve services to meet the needs of excluded groups. Some donors, like the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, have agreed to support the costs of mental recovery for women activists to help them restore their strength and support others.

How should women’s voices be integrated into recovery and peacebuilding efforts?

Women must have a real seat at the negotiation table. Genuine participation means not just counting the number of women involved but ensuring their voices are heard and their needs addressed. Unfortunately, the gender impacts of the war remain a secondary concern.

We have outlined at least 10 key areas where the gender impacts of the war should be discussed and prioritised in negotiations. However, it looks like these are being largely ignored in the current high-level negotiations between Russia and the USA. We heard that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted the importance of returning Ukrainian children when he met with Donald Trump. It’s highly important for the mothers and fathers of these children and for all Ukrainians.

Women’s CSOs are working to ensure all survivors can access justice and fair reparations, and that nobody forgets and excuses the war crimes committed. We urgently need accountability; peace cannot be achieved at the expense of truth. This is particularly important because the Council of Europe’s Register of Damage for Ukraine only accepts testimonies of war crimes that happened after the 2022 invasion, leaving out many survivors from crimes committed since 2014. We are working to amend this rule.

The international response should follow the principle of ‘nothing about us, without us’. International partners should collaborate directly with women-led CSOs, using trauma-informed approaches. For women affected by combat, loss or abduction, recovery must start with psychological support, and civil society can play a vital role in this process.

The effective implementation of Resolution 1,325 also requires reconstruction funds that incorporate a gender perspective throughout. Ukrainian women’s CSOs prepared a statement to highlight the importance of analysing the war’s impact on the implementation of the UN’s Beijing Platform for Action on gender equality and we used this as common message during the recent meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Additionally, we believe it’s time to consider the successes and failures in implementation of Resolution 1,325 and its sister resolutions, because it’s 25 years since its adoption and the world is not safer.

We appreciate any platforms where we can speak about the experience of Ukraine and call for action to support Ukraine to help make a just and sustain peace in Europe and the world.

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SEE ALSO
Ukraine: ‘Civil society remains resilient and responsive, but financial constraints now hamper its efforts’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Mykhailo Savva 25.Feb.2025
Russia: Further tightening of restrictions on ‘undesirable’ organisations CIVICUS Monitor 30.Jul.2024
Russia and Ukraine: a tale of two civil societies CIVICUS Lens 24.Feb.2024

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The Disappeared: Mexico’s Industrial-Scale Human Rights Crisis

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Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Featured, Gender Violence, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Migration & Refugees, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Credit: Raquel Cunha/Reuters via Gallo Images

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 28 2025 (IPS) – They found shoes, hundreds of them, scattered across the dirt floor of an extermination camp in Jalisco state. These abandoned shoes, once belonging to someone’s child, parent or spouse, stand as silent witnesses to Mexico’s deepest national trauma. Alongside charred human remains and makeshift crematoria meant to erase all evidence of humanity, they tell the story of a crisis that has reached industrial-scale proportions.

In March, volunteer search groups uncovered this sprawling death camp operated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Teuchitlán. The discovery wasn’t made by sophisticated government intelligence operations but by mothers, sisters and wives who’ve transformed their personal grief into relentless collective action. For them, the alternative to searching is unthinkable.

Mexico is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe of staggering proportions. Over 121,000 people have disappeared over the past decades, with 90 per cent of cases occurring since 2006, when then President Felipe Calderón militarised the fight against drug cartels. Add to this the estimated 52,000 unidentified human remains held in morgues across the country and the true scale of this national tragedy begins to unfold.

A web of complicity

What makes Mexico’s crisis particularly sinister is the systematic collusion between arms of the state and organised crime. The Jalisco camp’s proximity to federal security installations raises troubling questions about official complicity and active participation in a system that treats some populations as expendable.

The crisis follows a well-established pattern. In states such as Jalisco and Tamaulipas, criminal organisations collaborate with local authorities to enforce territorial control. They use violence to recruit forced labour, eliminate opposition and instil terror in communities that might otherwise resist. Security forces are often implicated, as seen in the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, where investigations revealed that military personnel witnessed the attack perpetrated by a criminal organisation but failed to intervene.

Young people and women from poorer backgrounds bear the brunt of this horror. In Jalisco, a third of missing people are between 15 and 29 years old. Women and girls are systematically targeted, with disappearances often linked to human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Ciudad Juárez has become notorious for femicides, with over 2,500 women and girls disappeared and murdered since the 1990s. Migrants transiting through Mexico are vulnerable to abduction for extortion or forced recruitment, as seen in the 2010 San Fernando massacre, when 72 migrants were executed for refusing to work for a criminal group.

Mothers turned activists

Faced with government inaction or complicity, civil society has stepped in. Human rights organisations document disappearances, support victims’ families and demand accountability, including by organising public demonstrations, collaborating with international bodies and bringing cases before international courts. But the most remarkable response comes from grassroots collectives formed by families of the disappeared. Throughout Mexico, hundreds of groups such as Guerreras Buscadoras, predominantly led by women – mothers, wives and sisters of the disappeared – conduct search operations, comb remote areas for clandestine graves, perform exhumations and maintain secure databases to document findings.

Their courage comes at a terrible price. In May 2024, Teresa Magueyal was assassinated by armed men on motorcycles in Guanajuato state after spending three years searching for her son José Luis. She was the sixth mother of a disappeared person to be murdered in Guanajuato within a few months. Another mother, Norma Andrade, has survived two murder attempts. Despite knowing the risks, she and countless others continue their quest for truth and justice.

Years of pressure from civil society culminated in the 2017 General Law on Forced Disappearance, which formally recognised enforced disappearance in national legislation and established a National Search Commission. While a significant achievement, implementation has proven problematic, with inconsistent application across Mexico’s federal system, inadequate information systems, insufficient forensic capacity and minimal penalties for perpetrators.

Time for change

The discovery of the Jalisco extermination camp has generated unprecedented public outrage, sparking nationwide protests. President Claudia Sheinbaum has declared combating disappearances a national priority and announced several initiatives: strengthening the National Search Commission, reforming identity documentation, creating integrated forensic databases, implementing immediate search protocols, standardising criminal penalties, publishing transparent investigation statistics and enhancing victim support services.

For meaningful progress, Mexico must undertake comprehensive reforms that address the structural underpinnings of the crisis. Critical measures include demilitarising public security, strengthening independent prosecutors and forensic institutions, guaranteeing transparent investigations free from political interference and providing sustained support for victims’ families.

The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances has announced the opening of an urgent procedure examining Mexico’s disappearance crisis – a step that could elevate these cases to the scrutiny of the UN General Assembly. International oversight is needed to ensure state compliance with human rights obligations.

This moment – with public outrage at its peak, presidential commitments on the table and international scrutiny intensifying – creates a potential inflection point for addressing this national trauma. If there was ever a time when conditions favoured substantive action, it’s now.

But whatever happens at the official level, one thing remains certain: Mexico’s mothers of the disappeared will continue their quest. They’ll keep searching abandoned buildings, digging in remote fields and marching in the streets carrying photos of their missing loved ones. They search not because they have hope, but because they have no choice. They search because the alternative is surrender to a system that would prefer they kept silent.

And so they continue, carrying their message to the disappeared and to a state that has failed them: ‘Until we find you, until we find the truth’.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

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Colombia’s Historic Child Marriage Ban

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Civil Society, Education, Featured, Gender, Gender Violence, Headlines, Health, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Sustainable Development Goals, TerraViva United Nations, Women’s Health

Opinion

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jan 8 2025 (IPS) – Colombia has just marked a historic milestone in the global campaign against child marriage, with the Senate passing one of Latin America and the Caribbean’s most comprehensive bans on child marriage and early unions. In a country where one in five girls under 18 and one in 10 under 14 are married or live in marriage-like conditions, the new law raises the minimum age to 18 with no exceptions, eliminating a 137-year-old Civil Code provision that allowed children over 14 to marry with parental consent. This achievement aligns with goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which has a target of eliminating harmful practices like child marriage by 2030. The new law now awaits the signature of President Gustavo Petro to come into effect.

The breakthrough

Child marriage disproportionately affects Colombia’s most vulnerable communities, with rates of between 40 and 65 per cent among rural, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations. In some communities, girls as young as 10 are married off. These early unions expose girls to unequal power relations, deny them education, limit their bodily and economic autonomy and lead to higher rates of gender-based violence and health issues linked to early pregnancy.

The passage of the #SonNiñasNoEsposas (‘They are girls, not wives’) bill reflected the power of persistent civil society advocacy. After several failed attempts since 2007, the bill, authored by two congresswomen, passed with unanimous support. This success was driven by a coalition of Colombian civil society organisations as part of the Girls Not Brides global network, including the Foundation for Gender and Family Development, Fundación Plan and Profamilia, working alongside international partners such as Equality Now and Plan International, with Girls Not Brides directly supporting legislative advocacy and media campaigns.

Beyond raising the marriage age, the new law establishes the National Comprehensive Programme for Life Projects for Children and Adolescents. This preventive initiative targets the structural causes of early unions – poverty and lack of education – particularly in remote rural areas. The programme includes the participation of Indigenous communities through their own governance structures, recognising the importance of cultural sensitivity in implementation.

The global landscape

Colombia is by no means alone in having a child marriage problem. Around the world, some 12 million girls are married each year, two million before the age of 15. While child marriage can affect boys as well, girls are six times more likely to be married as children than boys.

According to the Child Marriage Monitoring Mechanism, a collaborative initiative to generate evidence to support efforts to end child marriage, one in five young women worldwide are married before their 18th birthday, with rates highest in sub-Saharan Africa.

To tackle this problem, The Elders, a group of senior public figures, launched the global Girls Not Brides partnership in 2011. With over 1,400 member organisations in more than 100 countries, Girls Not Brides works to prevent under-age marriage, recognising it as both a human rights violation and an obstacle to development. It identifies four main drivers of child marriage: poverty, limited educational and economic opportunities, gender inequality and insecurity in conflict or disaster situations. It tackles the problem with awareness-raising campaigns, national and international policy advocacy and community engagement to challenge social norms that perpetuate child marriage.

Since then, efforts have multiplied. In 2016, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched the Global Programme to End Child Marriage. Now in its third phase, set to run until 2030, the programme operates in 12 high-prevalence countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Working directly with governments, it has reached millions of adolescent girls, focusing on education, healthcare and economic opportunities.

Regional-level initiatives include the South Asian Initiative to End Violence Against Children, which works in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and the African Union’s Campaign to End Child Marriage in Africa, launched in 2014 in 10 high-prevalence countries and later expanded to 30.

Many more initiatives work at national and local levels. They combine multiple responses, including working with religious and community leaders to change social norms, supporting girls’ education and economic empowerment, engaging with men and boys on gender equality, advocating for stronger laws and their enforcement, providing support services to girls at risk of child marriage, using media and technology to raise awareness and change attitudes and building networks of young advocates and change-makers.

Progress and challenges

These efforts have contributed to a global decline in child marriage rates. According to UNICEF, the proportion of young women married as children has decreased from 25 per cent to 21 per cent over the past decade, meaning that 25 million child marriages have been prevented. However, the global number of child brides is still estimated at 650 million, including girls under 18 who have already married and adult women who married as children.

The average annual rate of reduction has been 0.7 per cent over the past 25 years and 1.9 per cent over the past decade, showing the impact of recent initiatives. But at this rate, the SDG target of eliminating the practice by 2030 won’t be achieved.

Setbacks have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, conflict and economic instability. Wherever insecurity rises, so does child marriage, as parents see early marriage of daughters as a financial and security solution. During Syria’s conflict, for example, the rate of child marriages shot up among refugees in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.

Looking ahead

Colombia’s new law marks significant progress, but it’s just the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that many of the early marriages that take place in Colombia would have been illegal under the old law.

The real work of implementation begins now. Colombia’s efforts over the next few years will be crucial in demonstrating how legislative change can translate into real protection for vulnerable girls. For Latin America and the Caribbean, it should open up opportunities for strengthened cross-border cooperation and similar legislative reforms.

Colombia’s comprehensive approach could serve as a model for change in a region where many countries still have legal exceptions that allow child marriage under some circumstances, while others have strong laws that aren’t adequately implemented.

While the declining trend in global child marriage rates offers hope, the current pace of change remains far too slow. Colombia’s example shows that significant progress is possible through sustained, multi-stakeholder commitment and comprehensive approaches that change laws but also address underlying social dynamics. The international community must build on this momentum. This means scaling up successful initiatives, increasing funding for civil society organisations and maintaining political pressure.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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We Can and Must Do Our Best

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Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Education, Education Cannot Wait. Future of Education is here, Gender Violence, Global, Headlines, Human Rights, Migration & Refugees, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Yasmine Sherif with children at a school in Ethiopia

NEW YORK, Dec 20 2024 (IPS) – As 2024 comes to a close, I dare to say that this has been an especially gruesome year for millions upon millions of young children, their parents and their teachers. The world has witnessed one horrific crisis of cruelty, dispossession and human suffering after another.

Ukraine has entered its worst winter, suffering a brutal war with 65% of its energy supplies destroyed. While the West Bank is increasingly under attack, Gaza is still under bombardment, 1 million Palestinians lack shelter in the cold and, as the Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator for OCHA, Tom Fletcher, stated, “Gaza is apocalyptic right now.”

Meanwhile, the gruesome internal armed conflict in Sudan rages on, having caused over 11 million internally displaced and over 3 million refugees in neighboring countries. Each carries the yoke of profound human suffering. From Lebanon, Yemen and the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to the Sahel and across sub-Saharan Africa, millions of children have very little hope left for a future.

Girls in Afghanistan beyond grade 6 remain shackled to their homes, banned from continuing their learning. Countless children have to live with the life-long consequences of surviving rape and brutal sexual violence – sometimes as mere babies – in armed conflicts in the DRC, North-East Nigeria and beyond. In the Sahel, children have to flee their villages on fire with nothing more than their last piece of cloth on their frail bodies. In Latin America, Venezuelan refugee children continue to struggle in exile, facing dangers in every corner, from trafficking and gangs, to missing out on the opportunity of an education and a future.

These are real examples of some of the 44 countries and contexts in which ECW invests financial resources towards a holistic quality education, safe learning environments and school meals.

The question is: are we all doing enough?

As many will know, Education Cannot Wait is a global platform in the UN system, hosted by UNICEF. It is made up of our High-Level Steering Group, our Executive Committee and our Secretariat, along with strategic public and private donor partners, Ministers of Education and numerous admirable and hard-working UN and civil society partners, as well as communities.

ECW is able to deliver with speed because it is a catalyst that brings together partners who operate with the same level of commitment, energy and determination. We are also able to deliver with depth and quality because we share the same vision of a child-centered approach and learning outcomes.

In the midst of this very dark year, Education Cannot Wat delivered on its mission, making more than US$228 million in investments, including US$44 million in First Emergency Responses, US$176 million in Multi-Year Resilience Programmes and US$8 million in Acceleration Facility grants – the latter for piloting innovative approaches.

Our funding gap was further closed as we reached nearly US$1 billion in financial resources for our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. But more resources are urgently needed if we are to cater to the actual needs and reach, at minimum, 20 million children (pre-school, primary and secondary) and their teachers by the end of this strategic period.

With an additional US$570 million, we can completely close this gap. It is possible. When annual military expenditures worldwide stand at US$2.4 trillion, there is no justification whatsoever to fail in investing a minimum of US$570 million for Education Cannot Wait to support lifesaving and life-sustaining education for children enduring the brunt of man-made and climate crises; as well as to invest substantive financial resources to our sister-funds, such as the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd).

As our ongoing analysis and research at Education Cannot Wait indicates, the number of children in emergencies and protracted crises – who are denied or deprived an education – is getting closer to a quarter of a billion children and adolescents. We can prevent this.

While we are all trying to do something, we can and must do so much more. It is possible.

This leads me to the founder and outgoing High-Level Steering Group Chair of Education Cannot Wait, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education. He had a vision that led to the creation of Education Cannot Wait. Joined by strategic partners in governments, the UN and civil society, he pulled through its establishment at the World Humanitarian Summit.

In just a few years, this vision has turned into over 11 million children, adolescents and teachers benefitting from a quality education in the harshest circumstances around the globe.

In the immortal words of Viktor Frankl: “The world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his [and her] best.”

The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown did his best and has made an incredible difference transforming millions of lives and generations to come.

Let his legacy inspire us all.

With this, on behalf of the whole Education Cannot Wait family, I wish you Happy Holidays. May 2025 be a brighter year.

Yasmine Sherif is Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait

IPS UN Bureau

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