To reduce the growing caseload of police stations across the country, the National Police Bureau has proposed to restore the old panchayat system. The bureau has sent recommendations to the Ministry of Home Affairs and all IGs that the police and police stations are understaffed and the number of cases is high. Alternative Dispute Resolution has been disabled in Punjab, Sindh and KP.

An alternative system of dispute resolution should be implemented and the establishment of such panchayats within the police station limits should be made mandatory.

A mechanism should also be made for the training of the Panchayat members who conduct mediation. Jirga and Panchayat is a method and system that has been going on for centuries.

In Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this system is still fully functional while in Punjab Panchayats do this and in Sindh Panchayats come together and settle disputes.

In 2017, the National Assembly in Pakistan approved a bill that aimed to give constitutional and legal protection to the country's informal judicial system, Jirga and Panchayat.

The opposition had demanded a clear interpretation of the panchayat and jirga and that the power to nominate an impartial panel be restricted to the judiciary. Concerns of social organizations were also raised.

Panchayat system is good in its spirit. This will reduce the burden of cases on the courts, but it would be better to frame the rules and regulations of the Panchayat system to make it efficient.

There is no problem in cleaning a good social system from evils and continuing with good ones, but in the past, there have been such terrible and inhumane decisions of these panchayats, on which women were subjected to gang rape, young girls were raped by their male relatives.

Women and oppressed section of the society had to bear the brunt of the crimes.

This system will be effective only if educated people are appointed as Panches who are aware of law and human rights.

Jirga rulings making rounds once again

On the other hand, the Human Rights activists say that panchayat system has been badly damaging the country's image at international level.

Last Pakistan's ultra-conservative tribal elders in Bajaur area started fresh moves to confine women to their homes by taking laws into their hands and announcing full-fledged ban on women, barring them to visit any tourists place and resort even along with their male members of the family or in company of entire family members.

One wonders that orders were issued by the all-men Jirga (local gathering of the male elders) despite the fact that panchayats and jirgas had been declared illegal  by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2019 and against the Constitution of Pakistan as they are encroachment upon the rights of the people.

As a matter of fact, the Jirga justice has been in vogue for centuries and their main victims are women and less-privileged sections of the society as they are mainly headed and run by the tribal influential, who consider themselves to be supreme authority.

Last year, one of the tribal jirgas demanded the roll-back of FATA reforms.  Again in February last year, another jirga barred women from calling FM radio and called it an unethical activity.

While there are some of their latest bids to hunt women, there are countless incidents of  Jirga justice which enforces its decisions upon the locals while settling the property and murder disputes making use of the Swara tradition which uses women as a tool for dispute settlement between two families or two tribes. In some instances, even minor girls are given in marriage to older man for settling such disputes.

In extreme instances,   settlements with rapists have also taken places on the orders of Punchayats and jirgas. It Generally speaking it is the either the females or the poor's who suffered the most due to Jirga justice.

 In one instance, a young girl was ordered to be married off to a man from the rivals family with a view to settling the disputes.

In fact, it were these inhuman decisions which forced former Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar to out-rightly declare the jirga proceedings illegal and as an encroachment on "the civil and criminal jurisdictions" and "violative of Articles 4, 8, 10-A, 25 and 175 (3) of the Constitution of Pakistan in 2019.

The irony is that the local people are facing extreme poverty, lack of basic amenities like water, electricity and gas. Majority of men work in urban centres as labourers to feed their families, educational institutions and hospitals are also not available in sufficient numbers for the local tribal people, but the elders are more concerned about confining women to their homes.

Had they channelized their energies towards solution of the basic problems of the tribal people, the lot of local people could have been changed, and area must have been turned into a prosperous Tehsil. But that is not the case. That's why the local population is suffering on many fronts.

Meanwhile, the youth of the country also flayed the Jirga decision, terming it as tantamount to bids to impose the Taliban ideologies on the local people, especially women.

This is a welcome augury and good omen for the tribal people as the new generation is  against such practices and one can hope that such positive thinking will help change the entire mindset of the coming generations regarding women's participation in social, economic and political spheres of life which is a must for economic and social prosperity of the nation.

Most of the Jirga decisions are based on ignorance and they are in vogue since colonial times but despite this age of social media and internet when people have become enlightened, the system is still in vogue in various parts of the country, in almost every province. In Punjab, it is called the panchayat while the KPK call it a Jirga of Elders which means a council of the elders of the locality.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 18 2023

Like Business on Facebook, follow @DailyNCourier on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.