Pakistan: A View from Germany

I did not know much about Pak­istan as a coun­try, and even less about its polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion or its civ­il soci­ety.  I have spent far more time in Europe and West and North Africa in my life.  When I vis­it­ed Pak­istan, it was my first trip to any­where in Asia.  My per­pec­tive on Pak­istan after my expe­ri­ences on this trip showed how dif­fer­ent the country’s sit­u­a­tion is from what I had expect­ed as a vis­i­tor from Ger­many.

I am cur­rent­ly study­ing Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Muen­ster (a city in the West of Ger­many).  My stud­ies so far have focused on migra­tion and inte­gra­tion, human rights and democ­ra­cy and the rela­tion­ship between pol­i­tics and reli­gion. Every year, stu­dents at  my uni­ver­si­ty orga­nize an inter­na­tion­al Unit­ed Nations sim­u­la­tion con­fer­ence.  Stu­dents from uni­ver­si­ties all over the world, includ­ing some from Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty,  par­tic­i­pate in this con­fer­ence.  This is how I got to know peo­ple from Lahore and  got involved with BARGAD – an orga­ni­za­tion for youth devel­op­ment.  I worked with BARGAD in Jan­u­ary of 2013 because I want­ed to learn about the real­i­ty of life in Pak­istan.

Work­ing with an NGO gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the dif­fer­ence between what exists on the ground in Pak­istan and the way the coun­try is por­trayed in the Ger­man media.  News main­ly cov­ers polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, assas­si­na­tions, reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism, ter­ror­ism and pover­ty. While these things are cer­tain­ly part of Pak­istan’s real­i­ty, inter­act­ing with Pak­istani stu­dents showed me that social activism is alive and grow­ing with­in the coun­try.  Though my ini­tial per­spec­tive on Pak­istan was large­ly neg­a­tive, my expe­ri­ence with the NGO and these stu­dents inspired me to get involved and con­tact Pak­istani activists to devel­op my own view.

Through BARGAD I have been work­ing in the field of Pak­istani Youth Pol­i­cy.  After the pas­sage of the 18th con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, youth pol­i­cy over­sight has shift­ed from the nation­al to the provin­cial lev­el.  BARGAD and UNFPA have been coop­er­at­ing with the provin­cial gov­ern­ments to for­mu­late youth poli­cies for the indi­vid­ual provinces. I found the approach that these NGOs pur­sued to be fas­ci­nat­ing. In Pun­jab, BARGAD and UNFPA worked with the local gov­ern­ment to organzie large-scale meet­ings to con­sult youth from a vari­ety of social back­grounds, along with civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, to for­mu­late rec­om­men­da­tions for the youth pol­i­cy draft. These rec­om­men­da­tions lat­er formed the pol­i­cy that was passed by the Provin­cial Assem­bly of Pun­jab. Cur­rent­ly, oth­er Pak­istani provinces are for­mu­lat­ing their youth poli­cies in a sim­i­lar man­ner to Pun­jab.

As with any con­sul­ta­tive process, there are many chal­lenges.  Gov­ern­ments decide how many of the actu­al rec­om­men­da­tions by youth are incor­po­rat­ed into the final draft and how and when the mea­sures will be imple­ment­ed.  These poli­cies cur­rent­ly only serve an advi­so­ry func­tion, but they are still an impor­tant step, as it gets con­cerned youth involved and active in the com­mu­ni­ty.

I am often asked about the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between Ger­man and Pak­istani youth poli­cies.  It is dif­fi­cult for me to com­pare the two giv­en that just 25% of the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion is 25 and under, while over 50% of Pakistan’s pop­u­la­tion is in this age group.  The dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tion demo­graph­ics mean that youth poli­cies are pur­sued dif­fer­ent­ly in Ger­many than in Pak­istan.  How­ev­er, there has been an increas­ing focus on youth even in Ger­many.

At the end of 2012, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Fam­i­ly, Elder­ly Peo­ple, Women and Youth launched an ini­tia­tive to devel­op a nation­al Ger­man Youth Pol­i­cy. They called for orga­ni­za­tions, insti­tu­tions and oth­er stake­hold­ers invovled with youth issues to con­tribute to the process.  Noth­ing com­pa­ra­ble to the con­sul­ta­tive meet­ings been held in Pak­istan will take place, but this is an impor­tant ini­tia­tive. The aims of the Ger­man Min­istry stat­ed in the first basic points doc­u­ment issued on the sub­ject are not so dif­fer­ent than the aims stat­ed in the Pun­jab Youth Pol­i­cy doc­u­ment.  They both aim to cre­ate  bet­ter and more equal  edu­ca­tion­al and eco­nom­ic  oppor­tu­ni­ties for youth.  They intend to help them devel­op their poten­tial and moti­vate them to get invovled in the polit­i­cal process.  Still, there is much to be done between poli­cies and results.

Schol­ars often refer to the “youth bulge“ in Pak­istan. For some­body from Ger­many — a coun­try that strug­gles for qual­i­fied employ­ees since there are less and less youth – this sounds like a coun­try with great poten­tial.  How­ev­er, there will be con­se­quences if these young peo­ple are not giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op to their full poten­tial.  What alter­na­tives will they turn to? This ques­tion may not be new even in Pak­istan, but it is an impor­tant one.  NGOs such as BARGAD and Khu­di are work­ing to cre­ate these oppor­tu­ni­ties, and I was fas­ci­nat­ed to see the work that they are doing in Pak­istan.

Five weeks was just enough time for me to rush into the chaos of Lahore, catch a bit of the atmos­phere, meet wel­com­ing Pak­ista­nis, and have new expe­ri­ences in Gujran­wala, but I would have loved to stay longer. I already miss the music, the chaos (well, just a bit), the food, the fog, all the friends I made, and the rev­el­ry of Lahore at night. While I will not miss the pow­er out­ages and the patchy cell phone ser­vice, I am so thank­ful for the expe­ri­ence.  I loved how much peo­ple enjoyed tak­ing pic­tures and I just wish I had more of them to remem­ber my expe­ri­ence with.

Dur­ing my time in Pak­istan, peo­ple did all they could to help me feel at home.  I was so sur­prised when I was invit­ed to a New Year’s Par­ty! I enjoyed the dis­cus­sions I had with peo­ple while I was there. It was inter­est­ing to see the Pak­istani per­spec­tive on Ger­many, although I was a bit dis­ap­point­ed when peo­ple knew more about Hitler than the West­phalian Peace Treaty that had been signed in Ger­many.

Some­times, I could hard­ly believe the way peo­ple viewed oth­ers because of dif­fer­ent atti­tudes. I was shocked when I heard about the blasts in Quet­ta in mid-Jan­u­ary and I watched in aston­ish­ment when those trucks full of peo­ple left Lahore for the long march to Islam­abad. How­ev­er, over­all I enjoyed these expe­ri­ences. I adored the debat­ing soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties and schools, as through them I got to hear so many awe­some speak­ers.  I hon­est­ly admired the peo­ple I have been work­ing with and the effort they put into their projects.

I don’t want to sound naive, but nei­ther do I want to say that the sit­u­a­tion in Pak­istan is sad and hope­less for its pop­u­la­tion. I have heard peo­ple talk this way sev­er­al times, but this view is based on the sim­pli­fied image that is cre­at­ed by the inter­na­tion­al media.  Dur­ing my stay in Pak­istan, I saw that it can be very chal­leng­ing for those who want to bring about change in the coun­try, and it would be a shame if their voic­es are not heard by peo­ple around the world.

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 8)