Srinagar:
University of Kashmir on Tuesday held a day-long seminar on “Violence Against Women.”
Vice-Chancellor Prof Khurshid Iqbal Andrabi presided over the national-level seminar organized by the Department of Social Works, and called for “introspection” to find out causes and solutions to the “burgeoning problem” of violence against women.
“We have been always talking about the problems, not the solutions,” he said in his presidential address. “It is time we start debating and discussing the solutions after careful introspection at individual and collective levels as to why such problems exist in the first place and how these can be effectively addressed.”
Prof Andrabi complimented the Department of Social Works for organizing the seminar.
Vice-Chancellor of Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) Prof Mushtaq Siddiqi said the problem of violence against women has compounded “due to unequal power sharing which has disturbed the balance and led to crime and discrimination.”
“We have legislations, laws, rules and platforms for protection of women rights, yet the problem of crime against women persists which shows we have collectively failed to safeguard the rights of women,” he said.
In her keynote address, noted writer and social activist Sahiba Hussain said: “After working for so many years on the issue (of women rights), what I realized is that this level of crime against women has taken deep roots in our society because of the fact that the level of conviction is abysmally low.”
