Dawn Editorials 20th October 2025

Hunger outbreak

FEEDING people will be harder than ever as the UN World Food Programme warns of a hunger emergency for nearly 14m people worldwide, including Afghanistan, Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Haiti, due to slashed global aid. The agency says it “expects to receive 40pc less funding for 2025, resulting in a projected budget of $6.4bn, down from $10bn in 2024”. Clearly, the Western world, led by the US, Britain, France and Germany, is morally broke. It has abandoned all obligation to development and humanitarian support, particularly in countries it spent trillions to destroy. A WFP report, A Lifeline at Risk, forecasts that food aid cuts could send a populace of 13.7m “from crisis to emergency” stages of hunger, a degree away from famine “in a five-level international hunger scale”. According to the programme, some 319m people currently face food insecurity; 44m are in hunger emergency.

Pakistan, too, will battle alarming food poverty. The present scenario is hardly healthy: four out 10 under-five children are stunted, 17.7pc are experiencing wasting and a staggering 28.9pc underweight. An IPC study last year revealed that 2.14m of the country’s children are severely underfed. The government’s cold-blooded attitude and unwillingness to include nutrition in political agendas has brought us to this point. Reliance on foreign aid long meant that the authorities were able to abdicate their duty to provide citizens with food, safety and education. As help from the US dries up, Pakistan cannot be dependent; it must itself provide its children with proper health facilities, accessible and affordable food supplies, including through mobile distribution units, and encourage guided feeding practices. In a dilapidated economy, lowered malnutrition is unachievable without health reforms. This requires international expertise and cooperation. Economic success is unattainable until sustenance and healthcare are guaranteed for future generations.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2025

Absent transparency

THE sale of the loss-making First Women Bank to a large investment company based in the UAE for a modest $14.6m, albeit small in scale, is nonetheless a welcome development. The sale of the government’s entire stake of 82.64pc in the bank to the International Holding Company, under what is being touted as a ‘government-to-government’ deal with the UAE, to a major player controlling assets worth $240bn globally sends positive signals, even if the amount is limited. Yet the fact that it took the government 31 years to sell the bank, despite repeated attempts since its inclusion in the privatisation list in 1994, shows how far the privatisation agenda has drifted from its original promise. The transaction could serve as a catalyst for the long-promised flows of Gulf investments to Pakistan.

Still, the transaction has triggered concerns over the manner in which the sale has been executed. Instead of taking the preferred route of competitive bidding as mandated under the Privatisation Ordinance, the government’s preference for a negotiated deal under the Inter-Governmental Commercial Transactions Act has raised valid questions about the lack of transparency in the process. The law, enacted in 2022 to bypass the bidding process in direct G2G transactions, appears to have been manipulated to facilitate the sale of a public asset to a foreign private entity. The argument that the deal could not have materialised without the UAE’s active support, or that the law does not necessarily have to be invoked in direct transactions with foreign governments or their entities, has merit. Still, questions remain about transparency and whether a better price could have been secured through competitive bidding. The government would do well to avoid this opaque route to privatisation in future. The use of this law to bypass competitive bidding, particularly in big-ticket transactions, risks reinforcing public perceptions that the G2G framework is being used to favour certain buyers. Transparency will also ensure that the new owners will not have to face legal challenges as has been the case in several past privatisation deals. That only one prior transaction involving a concession agreement with a UAE firm for managing Karachi Port berths was concluded under this law before the sale of the bank suggests that foreign investors are seeking deeper structural reforms and greater confidence, and not the suppression of competition.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2025

Need for safeguards

ONE of the key manifestations of extremism in Pakistan is the misuse of blasphemy laws. While sacrilege can never be condoned, it is the misuse of these laws to settle personal scores and persecute vulnerable groups that has led to frequent bouts of violence in society.

In this regard, the government has stated its intent to reform the laws in order to prevent abuse. While speaking at an event at the Supreme Court recently, the federal law minister said that “procedural safeguards” were being introduced in blasphemy-related cases to prevent misuse. At the same event, the chief justice of Pakistan highlighted the need for interfaith harmony.

While specifics are not available, any progress in this regard should be welcomed, though it must be remembered that previous efforts at reform — even those led by the higher judiciary — have stalled due to the pushback from extremist lobbies.

Calls for reform of the blasphemy laws, and legal safeguards, are by no means a defence of sacrilege. For harmony in society, no abuse against the revered figures and scriptures of all faiths can be tolerated, and there can be no room for hate speech. Instead, what activists have been saying for decades is that the misuse of the laws has to be prevented. We have seen far too many incidents where personal disputes have led to accusations of blasphemy, while in other instances, sacrilege allegations have been used to dispossess minorities of their land.

Moreover, recently a gang of criminals was uncovered that would trap people online and blackmail them, threatening to go public with false blasphemy allegations against the victims unless they paid up.

Clearly, steps need to be taken, as innocent people have lost their lives simply on the basis of unproven claims and spurious ‘evidence’. Even the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology said last year that certain “religious elements” were misusing the laws and resorting to “mob justice”, which is “un-Islamic”.

If the state’s latest attempt to reform the said laws is to succeed, then there needs to be buy-in from mainstream clerics. Unless clergymen of all sects endorse the state’s move, and extremist voices are isolated, the initiative is unlikely to succeed. But beyond legal changes, to end the troubling culture of false blasphemy allegations, there needs to be grassroots change in society, so that sensitive religious issues are not used to target people.

Countering violent extremism has been highlighted both in NAP and NAP 2.0, yet beyond solemn promises, successive administrations have done little on the ground to translate these aims into policy. Holding conferences and issuing statements is not enough. Conversations must be held in neighbourhood mosques, madressahs, schools and bazaars to communicate the message, and adopt a ‘whole-of-society’ approach against extremism.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2025