Centre for Applied Human Rights
Khalid Usman
Pakistan, CAHR, Spring 2012
My name is Khalid Usman. I have five children (two girls and three boys), I hold a Masters degree in finance and management and am presently the Director of Operations at Khwendo Kor, an NGO working on women’s rights in Pakistan. Throughout my career, I have been associated with numerous national and international organisations and worked at strategic level management. I am on the Board of Directors of several national NGOs and national networks and coalitions in Pakistan. The main areas of my expertise in programme management lie in community development by applying and developing workable strategies at community level in the areas of education, health, micro enterprise, social organization, policy advocacy and HIV/AIDS within the framework of gender and rights-based approaches. I have managed a high level team of managers in national and international NGOs and I have worked with different communities and ethnic groups all over Pakistan, particularly in the province of Khyber Pukhtoon Khawa (formerly known as the North West Frontier Province, NWFP) and the federally administrated tribal areas (FATA).
I have worked for 15 years in the field of human rights in the very remote areas of Pakistan, namely Khyber Pukhtoon Khawa and FATA. I am proud of my association with the women's organisation Khwendo Kor (Sister's home). Khwendo Kor is striving hard to empower women in the rural areas of Khyber Pukhtoon Khawa and FATA so that they can voice their rights at local and policy level. My human rights work in Khwendo Kor is mainly concerned with delivering integrated gender and rights based development programmes throughout Khyber Pukhtoon Khawa and FATA. The focus of my work is to facilitate women in increasing their access to basic human rights through integrated development programmes which include education, health, social organisation and mobilisation, sustainable livelihood, policy advocacy and relief and rehabilitation, with gender, networking and poverty as cross-cutting themes. Women’s rights and protection against gender-based violence is central to all interventions.
Our aim is to include all those who have negative perceptions about development and women's rights as we believe in inclusion.
I have received threatening letters and telephone calls telling me to leave this work. Several times I have been monitored by militants but fortunately escaped. I have faced casualties in my work as a human rights defender: my staff has been kidnapped, and my vehicle was snatched with guns after having been fired on. A staff member was seriously injured in the same incident. All this has been done for the purpose of harassing me and my organisation to stop human rights work and for kidnapping for ransom. Besides threats on my life, I have faced many other challenges such as disrespect and social stigma in my personal life. This is due to the fact that it is considered by some to be culturally bad to work with NGOs, and NGO and development workers are considered to be agents of the West. NGOs – especially women’s NGOs – are also perceived to be spreading vulgarity and preaching Christianity. After several years of struggle we are starting to succeed in mitigating this perception in the areas where we are working. However, there are still some areas where especially working with women's NGOs is considered bad. We believe that our intentions are right and not contradictory to Islam as our staff come from the same areas as those we are trying to help and we have the same faith. Our aim is to include all those who have negative perceptions about development and women's rights as we believe in inclusion.
It was really a very good opportunity for me to learn more about human rights and to learn from the experience of others around the world through my time at the Centre for Applied Human Rights. It has given me courage to work more effectively upon returning to my country. I have learned new ideas and about the framework of human rights work and how to integrate this rights-based approach to my work in Pakistan. This fellowship also provided me with the opportunity to have close interaction with Friends of Khwendo Kor- UK (FROK), a UK-based charity supporting the work of Khwendo Kor in Pakistan, and to share and speak about the work of my organisation at an international level. This fellowship is extremely useful in helping defenders to see diversity and to learn more about various world cultures and religions. It has also had an added value in improving my English speaking competence. Now I feel more confident communicating in English which will be very helpful for my organisation and my personal growth.