THE case against former US president Donald Trump is set to conclude soon. Once closing arguments by both sides have been presented the case will be handed to the 12-member Manhattan jury who will decide if Trump is guilty of the 34 charges of falsification of business records. These deceptions revolve around allegations of Trump...
Category: Columns
122 Years Only to Achieve Zero Maternal Deaths- Wake Up Pakistan
30 years of ICPD 1994: Pockets of inequality persist The year 2024 commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt. It was recognized as an event of significant importance where 179 governments pledged to prioritize sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as fundamental to sustainable...
Transported to another era
THE structural foundation of the Roman Empire, history tells us, included the roads that were built. With this communication network, the expanding empire was able to connect newly conquered lands. It did not matter how disparate a culture or how unintelligible a language was to the ruling Romans; the road was the connection they needed....
Transitions and instability
A CLIP from a recent television talk show is doing the rounds on the banned platform, X. In it, a journalist/ commentator discusses how rumours of a possible extension for the Supreme Court chief justice have cropped up time and again. The option was ‘discussed’ during the tenures of Saqib Nisar and Asif Saeed Khosa,...
Empowerment is Expensive: My Unfolding Story of Social Entrepreneurship
What could be more joyous than to see some of the wishes coming true in your lifetime? Within the list of many wishes, a foremost and prioritized wish within my generation of crazy changemakers was to see the understanding of “social entrepreneurship.” Being a witness to a time when the mere word ‘entrepreneurship’ was not...
Rising Temperatures Threaten Global Fruit Cultivation: A Shift in Orchard Dynamic
Environmental stresses pose significant threats to global food security and have detrimental effects on crop production worldwide, particularly impacting fruit cultivation. Abiotic stresses, such as rising temperatures, reduced precipitation, heat waves, and cold temperatures, disrupt the timing of flowering, fruit set, and harvesting, leading to decreased productivity and compromised fruit quality, especially in arid and...
World Health Day: Health is a Right- But for whom?
Health is recognized as a constitutional right in 140 countries worldwide. However, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not among them. It is even more surprising to consider the disregard for this “value” assigned to health in a country that ranks 164th out of 193 nations on the Human Development Index. The theme of World...
Women’s Day Celebrations: Recognizing Achievements, Inspiring Future Generations
International Women’s Day, celebrated annually on March 8th, is a worldwide acknowledgement of women’s social, economic, cultural, and political accomplishments. It serves as a tribute to the significant impact women have made throughout history and as a platform to champion gender equality. Over the years, from the suffragette movements to the #MeToo era. women have...
Dowries, Daughters, and Democracy
While certain terms and concepts have assumed the status of regular add-ons in prime-time TV shows, social media news, and print media editorials and opinions, any serious student of social development with an intersectional perspective would be puzzled. The devil lies in the details. Under the heavy weight of umbrella terms like SDGs, Elite Capture,...
Education Interrupted: Gaza Students Struggle as Schools and Universities Become Targets of Conflict
An Israeli airstrike devastated Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, along with several other educational institutions in the occupied territory. The Israelis damaged nine university buildings in Gaza and two in the West Bank. This resulted in over 227,335 Palestinian students, including 555 with scholarships abroad. It also experiences disruptions to their higher education. Then, on Jan. 18,...