In a move that has sparked deep concern among legal experts, activists, and survivors, Pakistan’s Senate has passed a bill abolishing the death penalty for those who shelter perpetrators of the abduction and public stripping of women. Instead, such offenders will now face life imprisonment, confiscation of assets, and substantial fines.
The government claims this aligns Pakistan with international human rights standards and the principle of proportional punishment in Islamic law. But in the real world— a world where violent crimes against women are often committed to shame entire families and communities— this decision risks eroding one of the last lines of deterrence for crimes that strike at the very heart of women’s dignity.
Public abduction and forced stripping are not simple crimes of violence. They are a deliberate act of social annihilation, often used as a weapon of collective punishment and humiliation. For decades, the promise of the ultimate penalty has stood, at least symbolically, as proof that the state would exact the severest price for the severest assault on women’s honor.
One might argue that the death penalty’s mere presence has not eradicated gender-based violence in Pakistan. That is true— but abolition alone does not fix this. The reality is that when certainty of punishment is already weak, further lowering the ceiling of punishment removes an important psychological and social deterrent for perpetrators who commit violence as a message to others.
Too often, our lawmakers cherry-pick foreign examples that fit a donor-driven narrative of abolishing capital punishment, ignoring our regional realities. Consider the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia: two countries that consistently rank among the safest for women in the region, and indeed, the world. Both maintain strict and swift punishments for crimes like rape, abduction, and violent assault.
It is not only the harshness of punishment that works there but the certainty and speed of it. Crimes that degrade women’s bodily autonomy are met with a clear, uncompromising state response. Social order is preserved in part because the law signals that certain lines cannot be crossed without paying the highest possible price.
Pakistan’s social fabric is not so different: notions of honour, shame, and communal standing are deeply embedded. In such contexts, the deterrent value of the ultimate punishment carries weight far beyond the individual perpetrator. The world might see death penalty abolition as moral progress — but when women’s safety hangs in the balance, that progress must be judged by lived outcomes, not slogans.
The world may applaud softer laws in theory. But in the narrow streets and rural villages of Pakistan, where honor still decides life and death, the victims will pay the price for a state that chose easy applause over hard solutions.
Proponents argue that the death penalty is misused— that powerful actors exploit it to settle personal vendettas or that innocents are wrongfully convicted. These are valid concerns. Yet the remedy is not to dilute punishments, but to fix the reasons wrongful convictions happen in the first place.
Pakistan has already created Gender-Based Violence (GBV) courts in many districts— a commendable step. However, these courts often lack the resources, trained personnel, and survivor protections they were designed to provide. Cases drag on for years. Survivors are left unprotected, harassed, and pressured to drop charges. Conviction rates remain shockingly low.
What we have, in effect, is a structure without the spine to deliver credible justice. Removing the death penalty under these conditions does not advance justice— it only lowers the cost of committing a horrific crime in a system that already rarely convicts.
Pakistan’s history is littered with cases where women’s bodies have been used to settle scores, enforce feuds, or destroy reputations. Village councils have ordered public humiliations. Powerful perpetrators have used influence to evade the law. In this context, the threat of capital punishment has been one of the few tools symbolically capable of cutting through the culture of impunity.
Some Islamic scholars point out that under Islamic jurisprudence, crimes that terrorize communities and cause public disorder— hirabah— may warrant the harshest penalties. Acts like abduction and forced stripping, which intend not just to harm an individual but to destroy family and social standing, can meet that threshold. A decision as momentous as this one should have been grounded in broad-based religious scholarship and open public debate— not quietly passed in Parliament.
Pakistan has taken important strides to protect women over the years: workplace harassment laws, acid crime legislation, domestic violence acts, and specialized courts all came despite resistance from those who said they were too harsh. Each was a statement that Pakistani women’s lives and dignity deserve maximum legal protection.
This rollback sends the opposite message: that the state is willing to soften its stance on the worst forms of public violence against women. For a survivor, knowing that the law will go to the harshest extent possible has a powerful symbolic value— it says the crime committed against her was so serious that the state draws no compromise line.
Without that, the victim and her family may once again be left alone to negotiate, to settle, to withdraw — while the perpetrator’s clan makes its deals behind closed doors.
There is a better path than a blunt repeal. If the government’s real goal is to ensure justice without risking misuse of the death penalty, it should do the harder work:
- Strengthen the GBV courts so they deliver timely, survivor-centred justice— not endless adjournments.
- Equip investigators with modern forensics and digital evidence tools so cases do not collapse for lack of proof.
iii. Guarantee real protection for victims and witnesses, so survivors cannot be pressured into silence.
- Hold judges and prosecutors accountable to enforce strict trial timelines and prevent abuse of bail or compromise.
- Launch a national deterrence campaign, making clear that the state will pursue and punish these crimes relentlessly, with the severest lawful sentences applied swiftly and certainly.
The death penalty debate should not be about symbolic alignment with Europe or donors. It should be about what works in Pakistan’s cultural, religious, and social reality to keep women safe— and what gives survivors the confidence to come forward without fear.
Pakistan does not need performative reforms. It needs real ones— ones that do not weaken the last lines of defense for the most vulnerable. Any state that fails to protect its women from violent public humiliation risks losing not just its moral authority, but the faith of its own citizens in the idea of justice itself.
The world may applaud softer laws in theory. But in the narrow streets and rural villages of Pakistan, where honor still decides life and death, the victims will pay the price for a state that chose easy applause over hard solutions.
