ISLAMABAD: Human Rights CommissionofPakistan(HRCP)Secretary General I.A. Rehman said people don`t follow their religion when it comes to land inheritance. He said because land is seen as a key to power, men in the family do not give their women their due share.

Talking at a seminar titled `Consultation on Women`s Rights to Services and Land`, hosted by HRCP on Friday, Mr Rehmansaid when the British government had wanted to include Shariat clauses in the 1937 Act, Muslims had been reluctant because they had thought it would mean giving women their a share from their lands.

`Later on, because of pressure from powerful landlords, land was categorised as a provincial subject just to ensure that women do not get their share of the inheritance,` he explained.

`In Punjab, people say they follow Islam, but according to their customs, land is not given to the women. They have created an environment where women now say they don`t even want their share,` he continued.

The HRCP secretary general said his organisation is demanding that whenever the government is allotting agricultural land, it should do so to couples and not just to the men and that land should also be allotted to women who head their families.He explained that in the past, some land was transferred to women because of land reforms which put a ceiling on land ownership. However, these women were often not allowed to even be on the land they owned. He added that the laws that allowed women to own land were often not even followed by the courts.

The leader of the Awami National Party (ANP), Afrasiab Khattak, said that when he was in Senate, he and his party had made many efforts for land reforms which were met with strong resistance from pollticians.

`We could not even collect data on the lands. The bureaucracy did not want the reforms and even military land records were not given to us till after I retired from the Senate,` he said.

HRCP council member Nazish Brohi said the land issue is a political one in Pakistan.

`There is a general fear that if theirwomen were empowered, the men will not be able to control them,` Ms Brohi said.

However, the HRCP member added, the Benazir Income Support Programme has given women a sense of ownership because they are given the cash directly, which had never been done for the women in rural areas before.

During the seminar, some statistics were shared with the participants, which revealed that women were ignored in most sectors and departments in the country.

For example, there are just 70 women MNAs in the National Assembly compared to 248 men and just 18 women senators from a total of 104. From Fata`s eight senators, not a single is a woman.

There is not a single woman federal minister and only two women state ministers compared to eight men. Only seven women are heading our foreign missions while there are no women judges in the Supreme Court.