Khyber Pakhtunkhwa meaning the "Khyber side of the land of Pakhtuns" is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, and located in the north western region of the country. This frontier province that borders Afghanistan is divided into seven divisions - Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand, Mardan and Peshawar (the last being its capital) and is further subdivided into 26 districts, comprising of 21 Settled Area Districts (SAD) and five Provincially Administered Tribal Area (PATA) Districts.
For years and decades, this region has served as a home base for insurgents, militants and terrorist outfits such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and particularly after the 9/11 terror strikes in the United States, been in the news for a range of human rights violations and abuse.
Terrorism and abuse in all of its forms has manifested itself here, and it can be said with certainty that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa isn't behind any other province of Pakistan when it comes to perpetration of human rights abuse, killings, promotion of child labour, the denial of a right to education, internal displacement, disappearances and a soft targeting of minorities.
Most of these acts of abuse appear to have the clandestine backing of the Pakistan armed forces and the dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Not even the constitutionally-elected government of the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party has been able to make a dent in the influence wielded by both the Taliban and Al Qaeda in this tribal-dominant remote region. Imran Khan's warning in November 2013 to shut all NATO supply routes in the province following a U.S. drone strike on a madrassa in Hangu that claimed the lives six suspected Haqqani terrorists (including three commanders) and injured eight others, failed to have the retributive and retaliatory impact on the terrorist sway.
The frequency of the drone attacks in KPK's SAD has only shown that the Taliban is continuing to spread its wings and tightening its grip across the geographical expanse that is Pakistan today, and according to observers, experts and analysts, this has only been possible because of what they call a behind-the- scenes tacit understanding and backing of the federal government.
PTI leader Imran Khan has been a conscientious objector of these government-backed tactics of terror and abuse. Speaking of the drone attacks in KPK in 2013, he said, "Because we have our government in the province, we can't go to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). We cannot bring down the drones, but we can stop NATO supply, and we will stop it."
According to a report prepared by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to be the most dangerous and unsafe place for aid workers. For example, in 2013, 37 aid workers out of 91 were attacked, 20 of whom were killed and 17 injured. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is on record as saying that polio workers are often attacked in the key cities of the province because what they do is seen as un-Islamic by a largely conservative and religiously indoctrinated society.
Tribals are most reluctant to get their children vaccinated and often the work by immunisation teams is severely hampered.
When it comes to the issue of child labour, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has put out data in the public domain that suggests that little has been done by Pakistan to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. All four of provinces of the country, KPK included, have failed to enact laws to ban the employment of children below the age of 14. This dismal picture exists despite Pakistan being a signatory to all ILO conventions. It is no surprise that the draft Prohibition of the Employment of Children Bill 2012 is still pending for conversion into law.
The denial of a right to education in KPK must also be seen as another form of human rights abuse. Hundreds of schools have been razed to the ground by militants in Swat, Buner, Swabi, Charsadda and other parts of the province, denying and depriving children of the right to be educated.
Apart from Hangu, the other places that have suffered from terror and abuse are Charsadda and Peshawar.
Students and their parents are yet to recover from the December 16, 2014 terror strike on the Army School in Peshawar. Nawab Khan, a student, says, "These terrorist threats against schools should not happen. It is having an adverse effect on the education of children."
But he is also determined that he will not be dissuaded from getting an education because of such threats.
The PTI government has built security walls at some of the schools while majority of the schools, particularly in rural areas are still prone to similar attacks.
In 2012, the annual report of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) said that a fourth of Pakistan's 19.75 million children in the age group of five to nine were out of school. Out of these, seven million children (aged three to five) were yet to receive even primary schooling.
Till two years ago, about 51 percent children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were enrolled in schools
Internal displacement remains widespread in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where militant extremists, mainly comprising of the Pakistan Taliban, and military operations against them, have led to a large exodus of local residents. FATA has seven tribal districts - Khyber, Bajaur, Kurram, Mohmand, Aurakzai, South Waziristan and North Waziristan, and a majority of residents are yet to return.
Cases of persons who have gone missing in the province are also quite high. Dead bodies in gunny bags have been found in Peshawar in the last couple of years. Places like Buner district, Aurakzai and Kurram have reported people who have gone missing
Where do minorities stand in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? By and large, they are soft target for militants. There are reports of them facing frequent intimidation, and becoming victims of abduction. These actions are justified in the name of Islam. Militants demand and are known to receive jizya (protection money for non-Muslims in a Muslim state) from Sikhs in FATA with impunity.
Domestic violence against women in Khyber Pakhtunkkwa is common, but usually goes unnoticed because of a lack of monitoring and reporting. Women going public about the abuses that they face at the hands of males in their families is viewed as bringing dishonour and shame, and deemed as being against Pakhtun culture and traditions.
The government often turns a blind eye to such incidents.
A rare positive is that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was Pakistan's first province to have a right to information measure as law.
There are many bills and ordinances in the pipeline that seek to safeguard the rights of the individual in KPK, but it is a fact that in Pakistan, political and military interests have a greater priority than humanitarian considerations.
The international community's assistance is marginal. International humanitarian organisations have focused on camp-based populations and this limited interaction has hampered their attempts to analyse the full complexity of the situation and the environment.
