Gender Justice and Women’s Inheritance Rights in Rural Peshawar, Pakistan: A Human Rights Perspective

Abstract

Women's right to property inheritance forms one of the most continuously infringed areas of gender justice in Pakistan and in the rural context, where the customary laws often override the statutory and religious laws. This paper explores the inheritance rights of women in rural Peshawar, a human-rights discourse to explain how the formal policies are not aligned with the reality of those who are affected.  Using an analytical framework which integrates the Pakistani statutory law, the Islamic investment principles of inheritance, and the relevant international human-rights standards, the study explains the joint role of these factors that have led to the systematic denial of property rights to women. The setting of the discussion puts the local practices into a broader framework of human-rights on gender equality and property rights, and supports the importance of international tools, e.g., the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.  A critical analysis of the legal texts, traditional practices, and moral principles helps to prove in the study that the exclusion of women from inheritance is not only an obstacle to gender justice but also a violation of the basic human-rights commitments. The article ends by presenting the idea that the rights-based intervention should be adopted, which will integrate legal reforms, institutional responsibility, and community-level awareness to strengthen the enforcement of the right of women to inheritance in rural Pakistan.