“When civil society comes to work together it gives us hope that we have a constructive future ahead of us” Haris Qayyum, Senior Advisor, The Asia Foundation expressed this view while speaking at the closing ceremony of the ‘Celebrating Peace Together’ project here on Saturday.

The ceremony was attended by senior government officials, civil society representatives, academia and media representatives.

Programme Coordinator of The Asia Foundation, Farva Rashid said the project was launched by the Asia Foundation in 2018 in Punjab, KP and Sindh in collaboration with Bytes for All; Initiative for Sustainable Development; Legal Rights Foundation and the Accountability Lab with an objective to reduce violence against the vulnerable segments of the society.

This was achieved through Institutionalizing Preemptive Early Warning Mechanism and strengthening support networks for marginalized population. She further shared that the Punjab Women Protection Authority (PWPA), Directorate of Human Rights (DoHR), Social Welfare Department (SWD) Sindh and National Commission for Human Right (NCHR) were the strategic partners of the project.

Abdul Waheed Shaikh, Secretary Social Welfare Department, Punjab said that a state-of-the-art Early Warning System (EWS) was designed and implemented through this project enabling archiving of human rights violations, timely response, analysis and the future policy making. The system enabled the inclusion of local government and other state institutions for effective referral mechanism and support to the victims of violence.

Originally published by the Pakistan Observer