PAKISTAN: Women’s march faces religious backlash

In Pakistan, the platform of feminist CSOs behind the International Women’s Day Aurat March faced a challenge in the form of a petition filed by a religious advocate, seeking a permanent ban on their march on the grounds that it was ‘anti-state’ and ‘un-Islamic’. Despite the attempts to stop them, on 8 March thousands of women marched in the main urban centres for the third successive year.