Right to mental health
IN a promising move last week, the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), in collaboration with Taskeen Health initiative, UNFPA and British Asian Trust launched a thoughtful Malpractice in Mental…
Pakistan’s youth power
Three weeks ago, one of my colleagues introduced his son Talha to me; the 20-year-old with an otherwise slender frame, stood tall, eyes gleaming while telling me that he had…
The gendered costs of climate change
The 2022 floods were a case study on: a) how changing weather patterns will dramatically escalate disasters in magnitude and frequency and exacerbate the human and economic cost; b) the…
United against violence
Despite significant strides in legislation, gender-based violence (GBV) remains a pervasive and deeply entrenched issue in Pakistan. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 32 per cent of women…
Towards a new eco-social contract
At the recent UNFPA Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference, I had the honour of moderating a panel discussion on demographic diversity. The panel discussion delved into the complexities of developing new business…
Gender and population
ACCORDING to Pakistan’s 2023 census, our country’s population has officially surpassed the 240 million mark — an increase of 33.8m people since the previous census in 2017. The growth rate jumped…
Two trajectories
LAST summer, I had the privilege of joining a Canadian delegation on a field mission to monitor a UNFPA-Canada-supported initiative — the Sihat Mand Khaandaan (SMK) programme — focused on…
Data revolution for SDGs
Last month, I attended two workshops organized by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on user-producer dialogue to sense data needs and calibrate with statistical products – a commendable step…
Stay hungry, stay foolish
There was this ‘gentleman’ in the Moliere play who was delighted to learn that he had been speaking in ‘prose’ all his life without knowing it, in the context of…
The population denominator
Earlier this month, on July 11, the world commemorated World Population Day. To mark the occasion, the Supreme Court hosted a conference to underscore the importance of population as a…
