Hudood Ordinances

Zina (extramarital) Ordinance

In the two and a half decades the law was unchanged, several Pakistani government appointed commissions recommended the Zina Ordinance's repeal (such as the National Commission for the Status of Women in 2003, the Special Committee to Review the Hudood Ordinances, 1979, Commission of Inquiry for Women). Critics of the law alleged that while no one had actually been executed by stoning or had their hand or foot amputated in punishment as a result of the law, the ordinance made it dangerous to file rape charges as the women could be punished under tazir if they failed to prove an allegation of rape. In 1979, before the ordinances went into effect there were 70 women held in Pakistani prisons by 1988, there were 6000. In 2004, eighty-eight of the two hundred and forty-six women held at the Karachi Central Jail were held under the Hudood Ordinance's Zina laws. Almost all of the women were working class, factory and domestic workers, and almost all were there because of a complaint filed by a family member saying they had committed Zina.