Pakistan issues its first passport recognizing a transgender designation
Instead of having “male” or “female” listed on their official documents, Pakistani transgender men and women can have a “X” under the sex category.
Pakistan
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.
20,000 schools to install rooftop solar in Pakistan
The government of Pakistan’s second largest province, Punjab, has affirmed its commitment to the installation of rooftop solar power systems on around 20,000 schools.
Pakistan passes criminal law to prosecute honour killings
Pakistan’s honour killing law, passed in October 2016, closed a devastating loophole that had let families “forgive” relatives who killed their own — almost always women — and walk free. The mandatory 25-year sentence arrived months after the murder of social media star Qandeel Baloch galvanized public outrage. It marked a quiet but meaningful shift: the state, not the family, now decides.
India and Pakistan win independence after 200 years of British rule
India and Pakistan won independence at midnight on August 15, 1947, ending a century and a half of British colonial rule. Decades of organized resistance, shaped by Gandhi’s campaigns of nonviolent civil disobedience, had made the moment possible. The joy was real, and so was the wound: partition displaced an estimated 10 to 20 million people.
Indus Valley Civilization emerges as one of the ancient world’s largest urban societies
The Indus Valley Civilization took shape around 3300 B.C.E. along the rivers of what is now Pakistan, northwestern India, and northeastern Afghanistan. At its peak, cities like Mohenjo-daro housed tens of thousands, with gridded streets, baked-brick homes, and drainage systems still studied today. No kings, no pharaohs — just remarkably well-organized urban life.
Mehrgarh copper amulet shows lost-wax casting reaches the Indus Valley
Lost-wax casting in copper shows up for the first time around 4000 BCE, in a small wheel-shaped amulet from Mehrgarh in present-day Pakistan. The craftsperson who made it was working within an established tradition, solving the tricky chemistry of molten copper. Six thousand years later, the same basic method still shapes dental crowns and turbine blades.
Mehrgarh settlement establishes one of South Asia’s earliest farming cultures
Mehrgarh, a Neolithic village in the foothills of today’s Balochistan, Pakistan, was home to farmers growing wheat and herding cattle as early as the seventh millennium B.C.E. Its graves held turquoise beads and lapis lazuli sourced hundreds of miles away, and eleven drilled molars from nine adults — the oldest known dentistry on living people. A quiet reminder that South Asia shaped the Neolithic story from its earliest chapters.
Early peoples settle the Bhutan Himalayas, leaving traces across fertile valleys
Bhutan’s earliest settlers made a home in the eastern Himalayas as far back as 2000 B.C.E., long before the kingdom had a name. Archaeological traces and later chronicles point to the Monpa, a Tibeto-Burman people whose nature-based spiritual practices were eventually woven into Himalayan Buddhism — a quiet reminder that mountain civilizations run deeper than written history.