Whilst I am not one to doubt the competence of the legislature, it does increasingly seem that all legislation considered “progressive” or even vaguely first-world-esque in Pakistan is the result of international commitments rather than internal evolution. Perhaps the most glaring example remains the moratorium on the death penalty that has emerged not out of any deep domestic introspection but as a consequence of Pakistan’s GSP+ trade status with the European Union. At other times, such legislative movement is the product of sustained pressure by non-governmental organisations. All of this is, in principle, fine. If outsourcing legislative momentum leads to legislation, then at least something moves.
But Pakistan is also an over-legislated country. Laws, rules, regulations, and statutory instruments exist in abundance. The real question then is why we almost never see these laws in practice – save for when the State is angry with you?
Start with something as basic as littering. Since the dissection of the law that follows pertains to the federal capital territory, many of the examples discussed here will be those applicable to Islamabad. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) enacted Solid Waste Management Regulations in 2023 – though versions of them existed earlier in fragmented form. Regulation 3(14) clearly states that no one within the limits of Islamabad is permitted to throw solid waste on streets or in public places. The penalties are not insignificant: fines that may extend up to 500,000 rupees and even the possibility of six months’ imprisonment for violations of the regulatory framework, including Regulation 3(14).
Yet waste remains a common sight across Islamabad. And Islamabad extends beyond the three or four sectors most readers routinely visit. There is an entire rural Islamabad that is conveniently forgotten. The point is simple: there exists a fundamental gap between law and enforcement. That gap is usually explained away through budgetary constraints, lack of employee monitoring, administrative indifference, or the ever-present lubrication of small-time bribery.
This brings us to the recently enacted Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2026, applicable to the Islamabad Capital Territory. On content alone, it is a landmark piece of legislation. The definition of who may be considered an “aggrieved person” is expansive. It includes women, men, transgender persons, children, vulnerable persons, or any other individual — including persons with disabilities or those of old age — who are or have been in a domestic relationship with the accused and who allege having been subjected to domestic violence.
The definition of domestic violence itself is similarly extensive. It encompasses all acts of physical, psychological and sexual abuse — other than offences already defined under the Pakistan Penal Code or any other law — committed by an accused against a person within a domestic relationship, where such acts cause fear or physical or psychological harm.
More notably, the Act expressly incorporates psychological and verbal abuse within its ambit, an area long discussed socially but only inconsistently addressed legislatively. Psychological and verbal abuse is defined, in the Act, to include patterns of degrading or humiliating conduct such as obsessive jealousy and repeated invasion of privacy, insults and ridicule, threats of physical harm, threats of divorce or second marriage based on baseless allegations of insanity or infertility, false accusations impugning character, wilful or negligent abandonment, stalking, harassment, and even compelling a wife to cohabit with any person other than her husband.
On paper, therefore, the legislation attempts to move beyond a purely physical understanding of domestic violence and into the realm of dignity, psychological harm, and coercive control.
But the familiar question lingers: is this another paper-tiger statute, destined to join the long list of well-drafted but poorly implemented laws, or does it possess the institutional architecture necessary to develop real teeth? And perhaps more importantly, even if the law itself has teeth, is there a State willing to bite except in moments of selective outrage?
While those two questions will be answered in due time — and many of you will be quick to answer them for yourselves — I shall, for now, leave you at that cliffhanger and return to the Act itself.
If one momentarily suspends cynicism and engages purely with the text, the Act is not timid legislation. Its architecture is unusually interventionist for Pakistan. Protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, custody orders — and, crucially, the power to grant all of these in the interim — place formidable tools in the hands of the courts. For our jurisdiction, these are extraordinary protective mechanisms.
It is therefore curious that when the Act existed merely as a bill introduced in the National Assembly by the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Sharmila Farooqi, it faced opposition from members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F). Senator Atta Ur Rehman of the JUI-F suggested that the bill be referred to the Council of Islamic Ideology before being put to a vote in the upper house. Though no reasoning was offered, one can safely assume it was: the possibility that the legislation might be repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, in Article 229, provides that the President, a Governor, or a legislative house where one-fourth of its members so require, may refer to the Council of Islamic Ideology any question as to whether a proposed law is or is not repugnant to the injunctions of Islam. The constitutional threshold, therefore, is repugnancy.
The JUI-F can perhaps comment better on whether its members were unable to make that assessment themselves. To simplify matters: nothing in the present Act is repugnant to the injunctions of Islam. What, precisely, is un-Islamic about preventing violence within the home?
But the repugnancy debate has become almost ritualistic whenever legislation intrudes into the sanctified territory of the “family”.
And perhaps that is precisely where the discomfort lies. Domestic violence is still widely perceived — by legislators, law enforcement, and even segments of the judiciary — as a domestic matter rather than a violent one. The adjective domestic has a curious ability to neutralise the noun violence. This is where the implementation conundrum begins.
If those tasked with enforcing the law hear only the word “domestic” and instinctively retreat at the word “violence”, then the most carefully drafted statute will struggle to come alive. The first point of contact for most victims is not the court but the police station. And the police station operates on its own hierarchy of urgency. A complaint of assault within a household is often met first with attempts at calming, then with persuasion, and finally with a kind of procedural lethargy. The underlying assumption is that the parties will eventually reconcile, that scarce police resources ought not to be expended on what is perceived as a “family matter”.
This, of course, assumes that those same resources are deployed with extraordinary efficiency for crimes considered higher up the pecking order. An assumption that may be charitably optimistic, but that is perhaps a discussion for another day.
To the drafters’ credit, the Act appears to anticipate this institutional reluctance. Section 5 creates a direct procedural route to the Court. An aggrieved person, or any person authorised by them through a Protection Officer, may present a petition before the Family Court within whose jurisdiction the aggrieved resides or where the parties last resided together. The Court must fix the first date of hearing within seven days. Notice is to be issued within seven days. The petition is to be decided within ninety days, with adjournments recorded in writing.
Time, in other words, is not meant to be an ally of delay.
Even more significantly, a joint reading of sections 7, 8, 9 and 10 reveals a framework of interim relief that is unusually robust for Pakistani law. At any stage of proceedings, the Court may grant interim protection orders upon a prima facie showing. These may restrain further acts of violence, prohibit communication, mandate distance, require the respondent to vacate the shared household in cases of grave danger, restrain dispossession, direct the return of property or documents, and even compel police assistance in implementation.
Monetary relief provisions extend beyond symbolic compensation. Courts may order payment for loss of earnings, medical expenses, damage to property, economic abuse and maintenance, and may even direct employers or debtors to deduct sums directly from the respondent’s salary in cases of non-compliance. Custody orders, too, may be granted at any stage, including temporary custody arrangements in the best interests of a child or in accordance with the wishes of an adult aggrieved person.
Further protection lies in the durability of these orders. Interim and protection orders remain in force until discharged and may be altered only upon recorded reasons. The legislative intent is unmistakable: speed, protection and continuity. It attempts to create a procedural scaffold capable of responding swiftly to violence within the home.
And yet — returning to the cliffhanger left earlier — the existence of teeth within a statute does not guarantee a willingness to bite.
Part of that willingness to bite problem has already been addressed as a broader societal issue. Matters of the home are still not to be made bare for all to see. To dwell at length on why domestic violence remains prevalent in Pakistan — and, in this context, within the federal capital itself — would be an exercise in stating the obvious. Even prior to this Act, penal provisions existed. Assault, hurt, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement — none of these required fresh legislative inventions. Yet under-reporting persists. It is a consequence of entrenched social conditioning, lack of awareness, the instinct to protect family reputation, financial dependency, and the ever-present hope that matters will somehow resolve themselves behind closed doors.
If a case is fortunate enough to attain virality on social media, then perhaps someone from the ruling class — provided they have no remote connection to the alleged perpetrators — will demand action by reposting a video or placing a well-timed phone call to the relevant police officials. This is not unique to domestic violence. It is true for most crimes in the country. We are, after all, a profoundly reactionary nation. Institutional response often begins where public outrage trends.
Nevertheless, the second dimension of the “lack of teeth” problem lies within the architecture of the Act itself. Many of its definitions, though expansive and progressive, carry an inherent element of vagueness. That vagueness is not necessarily fatal as courts are routinely called upon to interpret and refine statutory language. However, it does leave considerable room for judicial discretion in determining how broadly or narrowly the law is to be applied.
More structurally significant is the institutional machinery the Act seeks to create.
The Protection Committee envisaged under Sections 15 to 17 is to be constituted within three months of the passage of the Act. It is to comprise representatives from family protection and rehabilitation centres, the National Commission on the Status of Women, a medical or psychosocial professional, a law officer, and a police officer not below the rank of Inspector — preferably female — alongside a designated Protection Officer who will serve as its Secretary. The Committee is tasked with informing aggrieved persons of their rights, facilitating medical treatment, assisting with relocation where necessary, aiding in the preparation of petitions, maintaining records of incidents, and coordinating with service providers.
On paper, this is a multidisciplinary response mechanism. In practice, one must ask: will this committee actually do anything?
Or will it become the latest vehicle for unlocking international donor funding — leading to a predictable cycle of conferences at five-star hotels, panel discussions with the same three-point agenda, and carefully worded resolutions issued at day’s end? Gatherings attended by socialites, ministers, judges and consultants, all seeking to polish already impressive curricula vitae, while the lived reality of domestic violence remains stubbornly unchanged.
The Act further envisages the appointment of Protection Officers — one male and one female — to be designated within a month of the framing of rules. Their duties are extensive. They are to file applications for protection orders where desired by the aggrieved person, prepare domestic incident reports, ensure access to legal aid, maintain lists of service providers, arrange safe accommodation, facilitate medical examination, and ensure compliance with monetary relief orders. Service providers, too, are to be integrated into the framework, tasked with recording incidents, arranging shelter, facilitating medical care and providing assistance.
In theory, this is a comprehensive support structure. In practice, it raises familiar concerns.
Will these newly created positions become yet another avenue for nepotism and kinship-based appointments? Another set of government posts carrying perks, privileges, official vehicles and staff — but little accountability? We already have a police force that is often overburdened and under-motivated. The creation of parallel structures risks adding additional layers of bureaucracy without necessarily improving outcomes. There is also the uncomfortable question of integrity. What prevents these officials, like many before them, from being influenced by money, political pressure, or informal instructions to quietly bury certain cases while pursuing others with sudden zeal?
And then there is the final, often overlooked but decisive element: rules.
Every Act ultimately lives or dies by the rules framed under it. Section 24 empowers the Federal Government to make rules for carrying out the purposes of the Act, and the failure to frame them — or the framing of them in a skeletal, unimaginative manner — would be problematic enough. But the opposite risk also deserves mention. Overly elaborate rules that prioritise committees, secretariats, vehicles, allowances and institutional comfort over function can be just as damaging. The statute itself already provides a reasonably clear procedural roadmap: petitions lie before family courts, interim relief may be granted swiftly, timelines are prescribed, and enforcement powers exist. In other words, the procedural backbone is largely settled. What remains uncertain is whether the rules will facilitate implementation or merely create another well-funded administrative layer around it. Because in the end, regardless of how many committees, officers or service providers are notified, the Act will still operate within the same judicial ecosystem — before the same courts, the same investigative machinery, and the same structural constraints.
Thus, the difference between a living law and a decorative one often lies not in the statute itself, but in what follows after its passage.
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