Sherry Rehman: an embodiment of versatile qualities
KARACHI – Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Shehrbano, popularly known as Sherry Rehman, was born on 21st December 1960 in Karachi (Sindh province).
Spelled ‘Sherbano’ on the Pakistan Election Commission website and ‘Sheherbano’ elsewhere, she is a senior Pakistani politician, journalist, parliamentarian and the member of the Pakistan Peoples Party. She has studied art history and politics at Smith College, USA, and the University of Sussex, UK.
Sherry Rehman belongs to a highly respected family of Sindh. Her mother Sabiha Hasan was the first woman Director of the State Bank of Pakistan in 1980. She was recalled after her retirement to serve as Media Ad visor to Governor SBP in 1995-96. She has recently served as consultant SBP. Sherry Rehman’s father Barrister Hassanally A. Rahman (1909 – 1986) was the founder, architect and the first principal of the Sindh Muslim Government Law College in Karachi. Famous as a social and community leader, Mr Rahman was also the first Vice Chancellor of Sindh University, Jamshoro where he served twice in this capacity.
Ms Rehman’s uncle Justice Tufail Ali Abdur Rehman was one of the top criminal lawyers of Pakistan. He served as Chief Justice of Sindh and Baluchistan High Courts. Her grandfather Barrister Abdur Rehman was a. famous barrister of the subcontinent and was affiliated with the prestigious Queen’s Council. The Rehman family is highly revered for their services to the institutions of judiciary, law and education.
Sherry Rehman has been a senior journalist for twenty years. She served as the editor of Pakistan’s prestigious newsmagazine, Herald, for ten years. She has wide experience in both print and broadcast media. Ms Rehman was the first Pakistani to win an award for independent journalism by the UK House of Lords in its Muslim World Awards Ceremony in 2002. Her bold and creative style earned her the reputation of the top journalist of the country. She was hounded by for Sindh Chief Minister Jam Sadiq Sindh for publishing a cover story on the plunder of his Home Minister. She also anchored a television show on current affairs in 1999. Rehman regularly writes for national and international newspapers and newsmagazines.
Sherry Rehman has been a Member of the National Assembly (2002-2007) and Central Information Secretary as well as President of Policy Planning for the Pakistan Peoples Party. Her interests in the National Assembly include foreign and security policy, women’s status and rights legislation and media policies.
In the National Assembly, Ms Rehman has served as Convener of the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Media and Public Diplomacy for Kashmir and member of the Special Kashmir, and Foreign Relations Committee in the PPP. She was leader of the Pakistan delegation at the Asian Parliamentarians Conference in Decem ber 2004 for the Islamabad Declaration Committee.
During her five years in the parliament, Sherry Rehman moved a number of bills related to media freedom, women’s empowerment and human rights. She is the architect of all five PPP bills tabled in the National Assembly, related to women’s empowerment and human rights. These include ‘Women Empowerment Bill’, ‘Anti-Honor Killings- Bill’, ‘Domestic Violence Prevention Bill’, ‘Affirmative Action Bill’ and the ‘Hudood Repeal Bill’. She moved two more bills namely, ‘Freedom of Information Bill’ and the ‘Press Act’, which prevents working journalists from being arrested under the 1999 Press Ordinance. She also vigorously opposed the Defamation Bill of the Musharraf-PML(Q) government as well as the black PEMRA laws that have largely been described as the regime’s blatant attempt to muzzle the electronic media.
Sherry Rehman has always been at the forefront of campaigns for better wages for journalists. She served as a member of the CPNE [Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors] from 1988-1998. Sherry Rehman is considered to be a leading woman politician of Pakistan. As member of the PPP, she holds the coveted post of the central information secretary of the party. She is also the president of PPP Policy Planning Wing apart from being a member of its Central Executive Committee PPP.
As president PPP Policy Planning Rehman has been responsible for co-coordinating and drafting talking points for the party, strategy papers on diverse subjects and for shorter current position papers for the leadership. She also headed the team that prepared the PPP manifesto for the 2008 elections.
During her over half a decade association with the PPP, Rehman has braved arrests as well as illegal confinement by security agencies on several occasions. She faced arrest on April 16, 2005 in Lahore when party was under fire as it was preparing for the arrival of Senator Asif She was also kept under illegal confinement, along with Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, in Lahore at the residence of Senator Latif Khosa, in November 2007. The house arrest came after the PPP launched countrywide protests against the imposition of November 3 Martial Law by General Musharraf.
Rehman has had the privilege and distinction of representing Pakistan at the UN General Assembly session in 1994. She has also lectured at the School of Advanced International
Studies at the John Hopkins University, USA, in November 2004where she authored a chapter on ‘Pakistan’s Encounter with the US’ and ‘Islamism and the Bomb’ for a Pakistan conference and book of the same title. In 2003, she lectured on ‘Rights and Religion’ at a South Asia seminar at the Harvard University, USA. In December 2004, she chaired a session for the World Bank’s Gender Assessment Strategy as well as the Media and Women Seminar at the SDPI.
Sherry Rehman was also invited by the prestigious Carnegie Institute forInternational Peace in Washington to speak on ‘Pakistan Today: Policy Challenges and U.S. Engagement’, in April 2007.
Rehman represented the PPP in the first parliamentary delegation to India in 2003. She addressed earlier in 2004for the South Asian Parliamentary Forum. Before that, she had represented her party at the parliamentary delegation to the SAFMA Parliamentary Forum held in Simla, India, in June2007. Most recently, Rehman led the party delegation to call for a UN investigation into the assassination of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto.
In the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Sherry Rehman moved the first public interest litigation on behalf of the citizens of Karachi against the Karachi Port Trust and Federal Environment Agency after the oil-spill from the tanker Tasman Spirit in 2003. In December 2004, she also moved the Supreme Court of Pakistan for directing government to reserve 10% job quota for women in the public sector.
In civil society, Sherry Rehman has been an active proponent for the provision of better access to health and educational resources, particularly for women and children from the lower-income sections of Pakistani society. In this respect, Rehman is the Chairman of the lady Dufferin Foundation Trust, the largest non-profit provider of women and children’s subsidized health-care in the province of Sindh. In her seven-year term as Chair, Rehman assisted in the construction of a state-of-the art seven-story hospital building at the 100-year old Dufferin Hospital.
She has also served on the board of several educational institutions, namely the Sindh University and the International School in Karachi as well as the Mohatta Palace Gallery Trust. Rehman is also one of the founding members of the Human Rights Comission of Pakistan.
Currently, Rehman lives between Islamabad, where apart from fulfilling her parliamentary and party obligations, she heads the Jinnah Institute, and Karachi, where she is the director of a multi-media design firm and founder of a heritage Trust, the Indus Foundation. The Jinnah Institute is a registered non-profit organization that seeks to strengthen democratic and secular values in the Pakistani community both at home and in the UK through the creation of public space for its objective.
As its Founding Chair, Sherry Rehman has held two-week-long parliamentary orientation workshops in Pakistan for women legislators in 2003, supported by the Westminister Foundation for Democracy, UK.
Rehamn’s latest book on 500 years of the Kashmiri Shawl, “The Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamawar to Paisley”, that she co-authored with Ms Naheed Jafri, was published in 2006. The book was published by Mapin Publishing India and Antique Collectors Club UK. ‘The Kashmiri Shawl…’ has been selected for the R.L Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award for 2006, in the US. Rehman will receive her award at the 11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, in Hawai, in September 2008.
Rehman credits her parents with instilling in her a devotion to public service and a solid work ethic. Her father worked for years in public education and law, and her mother was the first woman vice president of the State Bank of Pakistan.
“I was exposed early on to the idea of women working and public life. She says, “There was always an expectation to go out and earn your own living.”
Rehman is marries to renown banker Nadeem Hussain, President & CEO of Tameer Microfinance Bank Ltd.
Source: The Nation
Date:4/3/2008
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