Advancing Women’s and Children’s Rights Through Access to Justice

I work on promoting access to justice and protection for women, girls, and children, particularly those affected by gender-based violence. I head a Lahore-based organisation, Dastak Society, which was established in 1996 with a mission to promote and protect the rights of women and children and to create mechanisms, practices, and processes for their protection from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect.

Today, Dastak Society operates as an access to justice providing free legal aid to women and children, as well as comprehensive shelter services for women, girls, and accompanying children escaping violence. Alongside these direct services, we undertake outreach and awareness activities and design and deliver customised training for practitioners working in women’s and child protection. Our training focuses not only on relevant laws and policies but also on developing the specific competencies needed to respond effectively to survivors and victims of violence.

Dastak strongly believes in collaboration and sharing the knowledge and expertise we have gained through almost thirty years of hands-on experience working across a diverse range of human rights issues.

From Legal Practice to Human Rights Work

I began my legal career in a corporate setting, but within a year I realised that I wanted my work to be more closely connected to people’s lived realities and to contribute in a meaningful way to the advancement of human rights. I therefore left my corporate job and took up an opportunity to work on a child rights project. That experience eventually led me to work more broadly on the rights, protection, and welfare of women and children.

What continues to motivate me is the opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of people who come to us seeking help. Whether it is a woman finding safety through emergency shelter, someone gaining access to legal support, or a person in the community acquiring the knowledge and confidence to seek help, these moments are deeply rewarding. Hearing from people who have benefited from our services and seeing the positive difference our work can make is perhaps the most meaningful aspect of what I do.

However, the challenges facing women and children extend far beyond individual cases. Persistent social norms continue to limit women’s autonomy and equality, while there remains limited recognition of women’s right to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Women’s liberty, mobility, choices, and dignity are still frequently dictated by notions of “honour”.

There are also challenges within the justice and protection systems themselves. Conservative judicial mindsets can influence how women’s agency, rights, and experiences of violence are understood. Similarly, institutional attitudes within law enforcement can discourage women from exercising their rights or seeking protection. Gaps in public safety, accountability, enforcement, education, and employment continue to restrict women’s ability to achieve genuine independence.

Children face their own significant protection challenges. Their right to participate and to have their voices heard in decisions affecting their lives remains inadequately recognised. There are also serious concerns regarding abuse, neglect, and exploitation within institutional care, where stronger safeguards are needed to protect children.

For vulnerable and remote populations, these barriers can be even greater. Women may face social taboos around seeking help, limited awareness of their legal rights, complex procedures, restrictive social mindsets, and institutional biases that place family expectations or notions of honour above their safety and dignity. Institutional resistance to change can make it even more difficult for women to navigate the justice system and access appropriate support.

Building Systems, Not Just Responding to Crises

Access to justice and protection cannot be delivered by one organisation or one institution. Our work depends on coordination with law enforcement agencies, courts, other state service providers, lawyers, civil society organisations, and other NGOs working in related areas. Greater coordination among these actors is essential to strengthen responses, avoid duplication, and ensure that people receive appropriate support.

Financial sustainability is another major challenge for organisations working in this field. The funding pool for civil society organisations is shrinking, while competition for limited donor resources is increasing. Donor priorities are also changing, with greater resources increasingly directed towards areas such as climate change, leaving comparatively fewer resources for gender-based violence, women’s rights, and child protection.

At the same time, inflation and rising operational costs make it increasingly difficult to deliver and sustain essential services. Human resources are another concern, particularly the difficulty of finding and retaining trained lawyers who are willing to work in human rights, gender-based violence, and child protection.

The increasing regulatory burden is also significant. Growing state regulation, compliance requirements, and administrative restrictions can make it more difficult for NGOs to operate effectively and sustainably. Organisations are required to maintain accountability and transparency while working within increasingly demanding regulatory environments.

For welfare organisations to implement their work effectively on the ground, adequate and predictable funding is perhaps the most important factor. At the same time, sustainability requires organisations to develop strategies for generating independent revenue and maintaining essential activities beyond the scale or duration of donor-funded projects. This allows organisations to continue critical work, even at a smaller scale, when donor funding is reduced or ends.

Strong organisational knowledge and experience, committed and skilled staff, and effective coordination and partnerships are equally important. Donors also have an important role to play by providing adequate support while allowing grantee organisations the flexibility and autonomy to respond to realities on the ground.

External conditions can be equally influential. Political instability, economic uncertainty, inflation, security concerns, and restrictions on access to particular areas can significantly affect our ability to reach vulnerable communities safely. Natural disasters and other emergencies can shift both needs and available resources away from ongoing programmes. Public trust in NGOs and the justice sector, misinformation about civil society organisations, and restrictions on civic space can also affect community engagement and the ability of organisations to operate effectively.

Collaboration, Policy Reform and the Way Forward

There are nevertheless significant opportunities to strengthen welfare development in this sector. Closer and sustained coordination with government is critical because women’s rights, child protection, and access to justice require strong multi-sectoral collaboration. Greater and more long-term corporate social responsibility engagement could also strengthen access to justice initiatives. Such support should move beyond one-off interventions and recognise the need for sustained investment in institutional capacity and services.

Partnerships with academic institutions offer another important opportunity. Universities can provide NGOs with access to research, volunteers, skilled human resources, and spaces for training, conferences, and community engagement. Such partnerships can make welfare efforts more sustainable, coordinated, evidence-based, and impactful.

My experience in gender-based violence, child protection, and access to justice has also taught me that welfare initiatives do not necessarily have to be long-term to be effective. Both short- and long-term interventions can make a meaningful contribution when they have a clearly defined scope, focused objectives, and are responsive to the specific needs of beneficiaries. What matters is that interventions are grounded in local realities and designed to achieve meaningful and measurable results. Long-term engagement is particularly important when the objective is systemic change, while focused shorter interventions can be equally valuable in addressing specific needs or gaps.

At the policy level, I believe several priorities require greater attention, which I would like to list for emphasis:

1. Public budgets should prioritise women’s rights, child protection, and access to justice.

2. Law enforcement and the judiciary must be held accountable for delivering timely and effective justice in gender-based violence and child protection cases.

3. Monitoring and accountability of state responders should be strengthened to ensure the effective implementation of existing gender-based violence laws and policies.

4. Law enforcement spaces should become more women- and girl-friendly, ensuring that they are safe, accessible, and responsive to their needs.

5. Training on gender, child rights, and constitutional protections should be institutionalised within law enforcement and other state institutions rather than relying primarily on sporadic NGO-led training.

6. Lawmakers need greater exposure to the issues on which they legislate. They should meaningfully consult practitioners and affected communities before introducing legislation. Laws and policies in this area should not be developed in isolation from the realities they are intended to address.

7. Coordination between government, NGOs, and other stakeholders should be strengthened so that policies and interventions draw on experience from the ground and resources are used effectively without unnecessary duplication.

Above all, I would like people to understand that the advancement of human rights is much broader than charitable work or street protests. This is not to undermine the importance of either- both have an important place. But effective human rights work requires wide-ranging expertise, technical knowledge, strategic thinking, and structured and sustained programming.

It means consistently engaging with relevant forums and institutions, pursuing systemic change, and working on these issues beyond individual incidents or moments of crisis. Human rights work is a specialised field and should be recognised, valued, and supported with the seriousness and investment it deserves.

For me, welfare development is therefore not simply about responding when someone is already in crisis. It is about building systems in which women and children can exercise their rights, seek protection, access justice, and live with dignity- and strengthening the institutions, policies, professionals, and communities that make those rights meaningful in practice.

To read more about Dastak Society, please visit:

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/dastaksociety.org/

LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/dastak-charitable-trust/home/