Center organized the second meeting of caucus of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on June 29, 2018 at Hotel Hill View Islamabad. A total of twelve participants attended this meeting including six representatives from members of caucus. The purpose of this meeting was to show case Center’s mobilization activities with policy makers under the project “Promoting Legislation Promoting Action to End Child Marriage in Pakistan” supported by AmplifyChange. It was aimed at sharing lessons learned by engaging policy makers and public representative for pushing forward advocacy agenda of child marriage in Pakistan. This meeting also focused on discussing opportunities for future advocacy efforts and setting up virtual platforms of knowledge management on Sexual & Reproductive Health Rights issues including child marriage. All the representatives of the organizations delivered presentations about their current programs and projects focusing on child marriage. They also shared their lessons learned, especially with reference to implementing advocacy related activities of their respective present and past projects. Their presentations were followed by questions and answers and discussions.
Ms Saima Toor presented the key activities recently taken up by Bedari in connection to child marriage. She updated the meeting that a successful dialogue session with parliamentarian and CSOs were held last year and they had commitments from representatives of different political parties to make positive legislative action to end child marriage in Pakistan. Bedari also held meetings with women parliamentarians in Lahore, Punjab, in January 2018. All key women parliamentarians extended support beyond party position on women issues and child marriage.
She also updated that a research study on child marriage is being conducted by Bedari in its project’s district in Punjab province. Since there is dearth of research on issue of child marriage, it was appreciated as a good initiative to have evidence on this issue. She also committed that this research will be shared among all the members of this caucus.
Ms Shagufta H. Bhatti, Program Director CCPP, gave a detailed presentation on activities undertaken by project being implemented by Center. The mobilization activities with champions were highlighted and the caucus members were welcomed to follow up with these mobilized champions within their projects. She briefly shared the research and other resource which were produced in this project. She also updated on the progress of major activities of the project and related best practices and lessons learned.
Ms Paras from Sujag Sansar briefed about a community focused project being implemented by Sujag in rural areas of district Dadu, Sindh. They focussed on delivering messages on ending child marriage and informing audience about Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2014. She apprised the participants on the use of local theatre to disseminate messages on child marriage. She said that although it is difficult to change mindset of local people but there are some positive signs and they are hopeful that social change would happen if sustained efforts are made to address these issues.
She also updated that district committees have been formed to monitor the situation of child marriages in districts to monitor the implementation of Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2014 but these committees are not functional and only doing lip services to end child marriage. It is highly imperative to make these committees vibrant and functional.
She further explained that knowledge of police officials and especially who are working at police station is very weak with regard to role and responsibilities under Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2014.
Sharing her experience of engaging politicians, she said that election days are the best time to engage policy makers.
Miss Huma Aziz from Awaz discussed the Ujala project which aims at women empowerment and one of its objective is to address the issue of child marriage by imparting skilled based training to young girls from marginalized community of South Punjab. She updated that they are also conducting research on SRHR issue which also include child marriage. They committed to share the findings of the research with all member organization of the caucus. She also stated that Awaz team has local connections with many community-based organizations in South Punjab and they have also good connections with journalists based at Multan. If any of member organization needs support to find cases of child marriage they can help out in this regard.
Ms Sabeen Almas from SPARC updated the meeting that SPARC has taken up CRM national secretariat and CRM has completed a round of meetings with key members of all leading political parties of Pakistan and presented a charter of demands with respect to unfinished legislative agenda around women and children issues including issue of child marriage. She shared that all parties listened to these demands and expressed their support and commitment but it will be the next party in office who will decide about future of these legislative actions.
At the end of the meeting, it was agreed upon that intensive engagement with policy makers and public representatives should be continued beyond the projects timelines and concerted advocacy efforts are needed after the elections. There is also consensus among the members that joint efforts for advocacy is the only way forward with regard to bringing about legislative and policy changes on the issue of child marriage. It was also decided that platform like this caucus are very important for sharing knowledge, best practices and lesson learned because these valuable insights are usually not documented in any project reports. All the members were also convinced to have some knowledge management platform where all information, reports and research is available on SRHR especially child marriage.