Pakistan sees record drop in terrorism deaths in 2020
The South Asian nation has seen a reduction in terrorist attacks on home soil by 86% since 2013, and between 2019 and 2020 alone there was a 45% fall.
This archive collects solutions-journalism stories and milestones from Pakistan — covering health, education, environment, technology, and community-led progress. Each entry highlights what’s working and why it matters.
The South Asian nation has seen a reduction in terrorist attacks on home soil by 86% since 2013, and between 2019 and 2020 alone there was a 45% fall.
Some initiatives taken by the government which enabled the country to achieve this milestone include 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Programme, Clean Green Pakistan Initiative, Clean Green Pakistan Index, and Protected Areas Initiative.
Under the Protected Area Initiative, a national park will be made in each province. Under the initiative, the coverage of the protected area in the country will be enhanced to 15 per cent of the country’s land area from the current 13 per cent.
The ambitious five-year tree-planting program was launched in 2018 to combat climate change. The new jobs also provide much-needed economic stimulus amid the country’s COVID-19 lockdown.
The $1 billion program, which aims to cover 12 million families, is meant to assist them to “buy rations so that they don’t go hungry.”
In its annual report, the Center for Research and Security Studies said that a 30.71 per cent drop in fatalities was observed in 2019, down from 980 last year to 679 this year.
The extreme poverty (or below $1.9 per day poverty line) in Pakistan has gone down from 28.6 percent of total population in 2001 to 3.9 percent in 2015, Asian Development Bank said in a report.
The Pakistani federal government counts a transgender employee among its work force for the first time.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act allows people to choose their gender and to have that identity recognized on official documents, including national IDs, passports and driver’s licenses.
Malik says she had to work hard to break taboos and finally be accepted by a society that discriminates against transgender people.