Hina Jilani - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hina Jilani (born 1953) is an advocate

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

of the Supreme Court of Pakistan

Supreme Court of Pakistan

The Supreme Court is the apex court in Pakistan's judicial hierarchy, the final arbiter of legal and constitutional disputes. The Supreme Court has a permanent seat in Islamabad. It has number of Branch Registries where cases are heard. It has a number of de jure powers which are outlined in the...

and a human-right

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

s activist from Lahore

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

in Punjab

Punjab (Pakistan)

Punjab is the most populous province of Pakistan, with approximately 45% of the country's total population. Forming most of the Punjab region, the province is bordered by Kashmir to the north-east, the Indian states of Punjab and Rajasthan to the east, the Pakistani province of Sindh to the...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

Work

Jilani is internationally recognized for her expertise in critical human rights investigations. She started practising law in 1979, when Pakistan was under martial law. In February 1980 with her sister Asma Jahangir

Asma Jahangir

Asma Jilani Jahangir is a leading Pakistani lawyer, advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, President Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan and human rights activist, who works both in Pakistan and internationally to prevent the persecution of religious minorities, women, and exploitation...

, she co-founded Pakistan's first all-female legal aid practice, AGHS Legal Aid Cell (ALAC) in Lahore. Initially the activities were confined to providing legal aid to women, but gradually these activities increased to including legal awareness, education, protection from exploitation, legal research, counseling and providing legal assistance as well. She is also one of the founders of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan , or HRCP, is an independent, non-profit organization, founded in 1987, which is not associated or affiliated with the government or any political party. It is committed to act with impartiality and objectivity in all matters...

and the Women's Action Forum

Women's Action Forum

Women's Action Forum is a women's rights organization and has a presence in several cities in Pakistan. It is a non-partisan, non-hierarchical and non-funded organization. It is supportive of all aspects of women's rights and related issues, irrespective of political affiliations, belief system,...

(WAF) (a pressure group established in 1980 campaigning against Pakistan's discriminatory legislation) and also founded Pakistan's first legal aid center in 1986. In addition to providing pro bona legal aid, she has also helped set up a shelter for women fleeing violence and abuse, called Dastak in 1991. In addition to managing a shelter, Dastak also organizes workshops to create awareness of human rights and the protection of women.

A lawyer and civil society activist and active in the movement for peace, human rights and women's rights in Pakistan for the last three decades, she specializes in human rights litigation, and is especially concerned with the human rights of women, children, minorities, bonded and child labour, political and other prisoners. She has conducted several cases which have become landmarks in setting human rights standards in Pakistan. Her battle for the rights of children, especially the protection of child laborers engaged in hazardous work, led to the promulgation an act regulating the employment of children in 1991.

Jilani is also affiliated with the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

Center for Human Rights

Human rights

, the Carter Center, and the UN Conference on Women. From 2000 to 2008, she was the United Nations

United Nations

Special Representative of the Secretary-General

A Special Representative of the Secretary-General is a highly respected expert who has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to represent her/him in meetings with heads of state on critical human rights issues...

on Human Rights Defenders

Human Rights Defenders

Human rights defender is a term used to describe people who, individually or with others, act to promote or protect human rights. Human rights defenders are those men and women who act peacefully for the promotion and protection of those rights....

. In 2006, she was appointed to the UN International Fact-Finding Commission on Darfur

Darfur

Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...

, Sudan

Sudan

Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...

. She is also a member of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights. In 2009, she was appointed to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, known as the Goldstone Report, was a team established in April 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council during the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged violations of international...

. She is a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative

Media Legal Defence Initiative

The Media Legal Defence Initiative is a non-governmental organization established in 2008 to provide legal assistance to journalists and news media organizations, support training in media law and promote the exchange of information, litigation tools and strategies for lawyers working on media...

. She was the 2008 recipient of the Editor's Award for Outstanding Achievement by The Lawyer Awards.

Views

"The problem with the cases of honour killings and their non-prosecution lies in the permission that the law grants to the family of the victim to compromise the offence, and that's why the person who actually pulls the trigger walks free... although in the case of honour killing it's mostly a conspiracy between more than one member of the family, and that's the major issue here. I don't think the government wishes to address that issue."

"I always had this feeling that if you see injustice, you have to speak out against it; otherwise you are not in a position to complain."

"It was anger against state-sponsored injustice that forced me to enter courtrooms in the 1970s. [...] For all these years I have retained that outrage so I have been able to fight for human rights and against bonded labour, blasphemy laws..." (Monday, 15 March 1999, in Tribune India)

"The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions."

"There is a real danger of this occurring. The military have an agenda of supporting the extremists and are ideologically very akin to the extremists. It is very important that the world understand how important it is to act in a wise way."

"The United States totally misread the situation. If Musharraf had been successfully countering terrorism, we would not have a situation eight years down the road where (terrorists) actually control territory. Nobody has tried to find the source of the money or the source of the weapons."

"When you put them on trial, you show the wickedness of their crime. Once it becomes abundantly clear that the terrorists' victims are almost entirely Pakistani civilians, only then will sympathy for their cause be lost. We have to deal with terrorism as a criminal element."

"The civilian government must be supported thoroughly, otherwise we will lose it."

"The administration of justice can be severely hampered if laws emerge from different understandings or perceptions of religion, and their application becomes uneven because of the religious, moral and social beliefs of those administering these laws. Islam and almost all other religions of the world have sectarian and denominational differences. If a national polity is founded on religion, these differences will be manifested in political tensions as well as oppressive restraints on dissent."

Threats

As a result their work in the field of women's activism, Jilani and Jahangir, have been arrested, received death threats, and faced hostile propaganda, intimidation, public abuse and murder attempts on themselves and their family. In 1999 after representing the case of Samia Sawar, a young woman who was seeking divorce from her abusive husband, Jilani and Jahangir were again subject to death threats. Samia's mother came with a gunman to her office on the pretext of seeking reconciliation with her daughter. The gunman shot Samia dead and fired at Hina who managed to escape. Another time, gunmen entered her house and threatened members of her family. She herself was away from home: the threats put pressure on her to migrate, but she refused, and continues to live and work in Lahore.

Appearances

Jilani is often invited to speak at various events pertaining to human rights. On 17 September 2009, she delivered the 2009 Hal Wootten Lecture, at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. On 25 November, she was invited as guest lecturar at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

's Faculty of Law, the McGill Centre for Human Rights & Legal Pluralism, on the topic of "The Promise of International Law for Civilian Victims of War: The Goldstone Report". On 27 November 2009 Jilani was invited as a speaker at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on "Law vs. Power: Who Rules? Who Makes the Rules?".

External links

Articles

Neither Peace Nor Justice By Hina Jilani for Newsline 2/3/2009
Shame on Who? By Hina Jilani for Newsline 7/10/2005

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