Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Women of Pakistan: Maleeha Lodhi

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Maleeha Lodhi




 She is a Pakistani diplomat, military strategist, academician and political scientist who serves as Pakistan's Representative to the United Nations, the first woman to hold the position. Previously, she served as Pakistan's envoy to the Court of St James's and twice as its ambassador to the United States.
Born in Lahore to an upper-middle-class family, Lodhi studied political science at the London School of Economics and after receiving her doctorate from the school in 1980, she remained there as a member of faculty teaching political sociology. She returned to Pakistan in 1986 to become the editor of The Muslim, making her the first woman to edit a national newspaper in Asia. In 1990, she moved to become the founding editor of The News International. [6] In 1994, she was appointed by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as Pakistan's envoy to the United States, a position she retained until 1997. She was once again appointed to the same position in 1999 by President Musharraf until 2002 when she completed her tenure and moved on to be High Commissioner to the UK.
In 2001, Lodhi became a member of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament, she served on the board until 2005. In 2003, President Musharraf appointed her as Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom at the Court of St James's, where she remained until 2008. Between 2008 and 2010, she served as a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics and the Kennedy School of Harvard University. In February 2015, Lodhi was appointed by Prime Minister Sharif to serve as Permanent Representative and Ambassador of Pakistan to the UN in New York City, making her the first woman to hold the position.
Lodhi is one of Pakistan's prominent diplomats. She has been named as an international scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and, in 1994, Lodhi was named by the Time magazine as one of a hundred people in the world who will help to shape the 21st century. Lodhi was also a member of the National Defense University's Senate, and has been a member of the advisory council of IISS and continues to be a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum. Lodhi is the recipient of the Hilal-i-Imtiazfor Public Service and holds an honorary fellowship from the London School of Economics since 2004 and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the London Metropolitan University in 2005. She is the author of two books, Pakistan: the External challenge and Pakistan’s Encounter with Democracy. She edited Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State in 2010.


Saturday, March 16, 2019

Women of Pakistan: Dr. Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau

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Dr. Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau


Dr Ruth was awarded Pakistani citizenship in 1998 in recognition of her humanitarian work.

Dr Ruth a German-born physician and nun of the Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (born 9 September 1929) dedicated her life to eradicating leprosy in Pakistan. Dr Ruth studied medicine at Mainz, Germany in 1949, she joined the Catholic Order and eventually landed in Pakistan.
At the time when leprosy was considered taboo in Pakistan, rather than a medical disease, chivalrous Dr Ruth along with her team started their work in the slum quarters on McLeod Road, Karachi in 1960. 
When Dr Ruth first visited the leprosy patient colony; the appalling condition of the place, lacking basic health facilities, water and electricity horrified her. Dr Ruth decided to stay in Pakistan and opened the first Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (MALC). Leprosy patients were treated in Dr Ruth’s clinic and her work went as far as planning the last rites of the patients, who were abandoned by their families.
Her charitable work gradually started gaining attention and she formed a team of volunteers. In 1968, Dr Ruth’s clinic in partnership with the Government of Pakistan launched the ‘National Leprosy Control Programme’. General Zia appointed Dr Ruth as the President Advisor on leprosy control. Thanks to Dr Ruth’s tireless efforts World Health Organisation declared Pakistan leprosy free in 1996. To date, her organisation runs 157 leprosy centres and employees more than 800 staff members.
Dr Ruth was awarded Pakistani citizenship in 1998 in recognition of her humanitarian work. She has also received several national and international awards including; Sitara i Quaid i Azam (1969), Order of Merit (1969, Germany), Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Hilal-i-Pakistan, Ramon Magsaysay Award (2002), the Jinnah Award (2002) and the Doctor of Science (DSc), honoris causa, Aga Khan University, Karachi (2004).
In addition to her notable work in eradicating leprosy, Dr Ruth worked heroically to help the earthquake and flood affected people of Pakistan in 2005 and 2010. Her demise at the age of 87, after dedicating 57 years of her life to the people of Pakistan, left the entire nation in mourning. Dr Ruth was accorded a full state funeral in August 2017, the first non-Muslim to have received full state funeral and a 19-gun salute.


Friday, March 15, 2019

Women of Pakistan: Bilquis Bano Edhi

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Bilquis Bano Edhi



We never spread our hands, even if donations are low. We have faith in Allah and we keep working.

Bilquis Bano Edhi was born on the same day as Pakistan, 14 August 1947 in
Bantva. Her life has been one of service and providing safe-havens for the poor and the destitute. She got married to Abdul Sattar Edhi at the age of 17.


The newlyweds only possessed a broken old car and a small dispensary. She often relates a story that on their honeymoon that she spent all her time tending to a young girl with head injuries left at the dispensary. Bilquis Bano Edhi is a humanitarian, a social worker and one of the most active philanthropists in Pakistan.

She heads the Bilquis Edhi Foundation, holds the honor of being awarded the prestigious ‘Hilal-e-Imtiaz’ and along with her husband, received the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. She is also the recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize. Her charity runs many services in Pakistan, including a hospital and emergency service in Karachi.

The Edhi foundation refuses to take donations from governments.

The Edhi foundation is the largest emergency service in Pakistan, but despite this, Bilquis Edhi has lived all her life in a simple two-bedroom home that she owned along with her husband. The home is actually a part of an orphanage that the Edhi foundation runs.

Over the years, she has been visited by many of her orphans who were happily adopted, is often stopped and thanked by people who received much needed aid from the Edhi Foundation, and heard back from abused women whom she sheltered, trained as nurses and helped start a new life. Bilquis Edhi has won many awards, but she often comments that the greatest rewards she receives are the success stories of those helped by the Edhi Foundation.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Women of Pakistan: Benazir Bhutto

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Benazir Bhutto



Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, in Karachi, Pakistan, the child of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She inherited leadership of the PPP after a military coup overthrew her father's government and won election in 1988, becoming the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation. In 2007, she returned to Pakistan after an extended exile, but, tragically, was killed in a suicide attack.

Early Life

Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, in Karachi, Pakistan, the eldest child of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She went on to found the Pakistan People's Party and serve as the nation's prime minister (from 1971 to 1977). After completing her early education in Pakistan, she pursued her higher education in the United States. Bhutto attended Radcliffe College from 1969 to 1973, and then enrolled at Harvard University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in comparative government. It was then onto the United Kingdom, where she studied at Oxford University from 1973 to 1977, completing a course in international law and diplomacy.

Leader of the PPP

Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 1977, and was placed under house arrest after the military coup led by General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrew her father's government. One year after Zia ul-Haq became president in 1978, the elder Bhutto was hanged after his conviction on charges of authorizing the murder of an opponent. She inherited her father's leadership of the PPP.
There was more family tragedy in 1980 when Bhutto's brother Shahnawaz was killed in his apartment on the Riviera in 1980. The family insisted he was poisoned, but no charges were brought. Another brother, Murtaza, died in 1996 (while his sister was in power) in a gun battle with police in Karachi.
She moved to England in 1984, becoming the joint leader in exile of the PPP, then returned to Pakistan on April 10, 1986, to launch a nationwide campaign for open elections.
She married a wealthy landowner, Asif Ali Zardari, in Karachi on December 18, 1987. The couple had three children: son Bilawal and two daughters, Bakhtawar and Aseefa.

Pakistan President

Zia ul-Haq's dictatorship ended when he was killed in a plane crash in 1988. And Bhutto was elected prime minister barely three months after giving birth to her first child. She became the first ever female prime minister of a Muslim nation on December 1, 1988. Bhutto was defeated in the 1990 election, and found herself in court defending herself against several charges of misconduct while in office. Bhutto continued to be a prominent focus of opposition discontent, and won a further election in 1993, but was replaced in 1996.
While in self-imposed exile in Britain and Dubai, she was convicted in 1999 of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison. She continued to direct her party from abroad, being re-affirmed as PPP leader in 2002.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after President Musharraf granted her amnesty on all corruption charges, opening the way for her return as well as a possible power-sharing agreement.
Tragically, Bhutto's homecoming rally after eight years in exile was hit by a suicide attack, which killed 136 people. She only survived after ducking down at the moment of impact behind her armored vehicle. Bhutto said it was Pakistan's "blackest day" when Musharraf imposed a state of emergency on November 3, 2007, and threatened to bring her supporters on to the streets in mass demonstrations. Bhutto was placed under house arrest soon after, on November 9, and she called for Musharraf's resignation four days later. The state of emergency was lifted in December 2007.

Assassination

Bhutto was killed when an assassin fired shots and then blew himself up after an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. The attack also killed 28 others and wounded at least another 100. The attacker struck just minutes after Bhutto addressed a rally of thousands of supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, eight miles south of Islamabad. She died after hitting her head on part of her vehicle's sunroof—not as a result of bullets or shrapnel, a spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry said. President Musharraf said that he had asked a team of investigators from Britain's Scotland Yard to assist in the investigation into Bhutto's killing.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners paid last respects to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 28, 2007, as she was buried at her family's mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, the southern province of Sindh. She was buried alongside her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister who was executed by hanging. Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, her three children and her sister, Sanam, attended the burial. Following Bhutto's death, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced three days of mourning.
www.biography.com

Fátua para mulheres: oração - mulheres nas mesquitas

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