Parliamentary Secretary for Human Rights Syeda Nausheen Iftikhar has advocated allocating more funding and resources to create opportunities for women to make them an empowered segment of the society.

She was speaking at a seminar on ‘Women at the Centre of Development Agenda’ during a parliamentarians’ conference organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), according to WealthPK.

Realising the importance of women empowerment in the country’s development, Nausheen Iftikhar said Pakistan had made legislations to ensure better education and economic opportunities for women. “Concrete steps have also been taken to ensure provision of better healthcare to women.”

She noted that for sustainable socioeconomic development of Pakistan, there was need to help women realise their true potentials.

Speaking on the occasion, Federal Ombudsperson Kashmala Tariq said developing countries like Pakistan could take a cue from the developed world about how they had empowered their women. “All this can be achieved by providing equal opportunities to women.”

She noted that in a changed world, women have an equally important role to play, and asked IPU to ensure women representation in every sphere of life.

Kashmala Tariq said Pakistani parliament had ensured that the women lawmakers fully participated in legislative processes, as laws made for their amelioration could not be made without their inputs.

The participants of the session took stock of the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had left on women, and highlighted the challenges and root causes of discrimination that curtailed women’s rights.

The participants particularly focused on the Sustainable Development Goal-5, which concerns women empowerment, and called for steps to integrate the goal into the national legislation for effective approaches to promote political, social and economic empowerment of women.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk