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 expressed by the Federal Secretary, Ministry of Human Rights, Ms. Rabiya Javeri Agha, while chairing the meeting of federal and provincial stakeholders on women’s right to inheritance to review held at Islamabad on Wednesday. She highlighted social, cultural issues restricting women to get their due share in 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, amendment in laws. Besides, the representatives of relevant provincial and federal Governments, Director General (International Cooperation), and Director General (Human Rights), also attended the meeting. After the welcome remarks by Secretary Ministry of Human Rights Rabiya Javeri Agha, the Director General (International Cooperation) briefed the participants about the issue of women’s right to inheritance. He also shared key points of the proposed actions including review of laws to identify gaps, establishment of Federal and Provincial Task Forces/ Committees, and awareness raising mechanism. Besides, a set of questions was also shared with the participants for seeking their input to come up with possible solutions. The meeting discussed various issues and mechanisms with regard to 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 keeping in view the ground realities. The participants were asked to furnish their response 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, besides motivation to ensure documentation through registration of births and deaths as well as nikah nama/ Form B, recruitment of female staff at Union Council level, involvement of Women Parliamentary Caucus, and Village Councils at grassroots level. In this regard, the representative of Council of Islamic Ideology also mentioned their two key recommendations, made in the past i.e. division of inherited property among the legal heirs as per Islamic law, in case of Hiba; and addition of two columns in death certificate indicating detail of moveable and immoveable property of the deceased and the names of legal heirs. ***** ?
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