Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation (AWAM) organized one day training workshop on 'Community Education for Democracy and Human Rights' at Catholic Church, Jaranwala, Faisalabad

Faisalabad, Pakistan: April 01, 2010, (PCTV Newsdesk)



On 29th March 2010, one-day training workshop titled “Community Education for Democracy and Human Rights” was organized by Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation (AWAM) in collaboration with Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), which was joined by 38 Muslim and Christian participants from different schools of thought. Naseem Anthony (Executive Secretary-AWAM), Shazia George (Coordinator-AWAM), Zafar Iqbal, Amna Bano and Asif Mahmood were among the resource persons of the workshop held at Catholic Church, Jaranwala in Faisalabad District.

The resource person said, “Democracy is accepted as a way of governance, but it has not grown its roots yet at grassroots, because our society is still indulged in the clutches of feudalism, class division, discrimination, customary practices and intolerance, which are hindrance in the formation of democratic state”. “Women, minorities and other marginalized groups usually face undemocratic course and treatment, therefore it is the vital responsibility of the Government to remove hurdles in the way of prevalence of democracy”, they added.

The resource persons for the promotion of democratic culture demanded that: political parties should held elections within the organizations; political parties must play their positive and constructive role for passing the 18th amendment in the constitution in order to ensure balance of the powers among state institutions such as; judiciary, legislature and executives; provincial  autonomy and decentralization of power in the real sense to the smaller administrative units and the masses of Pakistan must be ensured through the proposed Constitution reforms package; measures should be taken to ensure the participation of women in the political process; local bodies’ system should be amended in order to ensure the representation of marginalized groups at grassroots; all forms of biases in the constitution, laws and policies on the basis of sex and religion must be removed in line with the vision of founder of Pakistan.