LAHORE: Celebrating more than 40 years of sustained struggle for a just equitable society in which everyone is treated with dignity and enjoys all rights, the Women Action Forum (WAF) analysed lcey issues confronting women and others currently.

The WAF held a press conference on Sunday at Shirkatgah, Garden Town, and highlighted the issues discussed in their National Convention, held from Feb 10 to 12.

The conference was addressed by WAF members, including Khawar Mumtaz and Fareeda Shaheed from Lahore, Amar Sindhu from Sindh, Dr Riffat Aziz from Peshawar, Kausar S Khan from Karachi, Batool Seema from Quetta, Jamima Afridi from Peshawarand Dr Mussarat Hassan from Hyderabad.

The WAF condemned the indifference and incompetence of the ruling elite, including the politicians, armed forces and bureaucracy, who had failed the people of the country as they faced dire economic, social and political crises while the women and other marginalised people were bearing the brunt of the fallout.

The speakers said the 2022 floods demonstrated the urgent need to be prepared for climate change and to reorient our inappropriate development planning that was consumer-oriented and anti-poor.

`The WAF is greatly concerned about the plight of the flood-affectees, especially people left behind such as women and children and it demands provision of immediate rehabilitation and support in consultation with affected people in a fair and transparent pro-cess,` a statement said.

Saying that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans conditionalities would further exacerbate the burden of poverty, the WAF demanded urgent reforms of systems and structures to avoid more detrimental borrowing. It demanded urgent measures to create Escal space such as reducing the size of the bureaucracy, keeping in mind that 18th Amendment, limit of 10 ministries, minimising federal and provincial cabinets, discontinuing the non-combatant budget of the armed forces, such as excessive entitlements, granting oflands etc.

The WAF expressed alarm at growing lawlessness and insecurity of citizens, muzzling of human rights voices, shrinking space for civil society and widespread instrumental use of religion to control and silence people.