Legal Awareness Watch (LAW)

Legal Awareness Watch (LAW) is a nonpartisan, non-profitable NGO registered under law since 1999, holding registration number 1388. Since its creation, LAW has been advocating, and raising awareness in Pakistan on human rights of prisoners in 104 Pakistani prisons i.e. the right to vote, right to dignity, right to life etc.

Apart from the promotion of human rights, LAW has been running awareness-raising advocacy on the abolition of the barbaric death penalty and the miserable imprisonment practices used against the marginalized (including women and children).

To achieve its objectives, LAW with the help of stakeholders and volunteers implements advocacy sessions and forums on the above subjects across Pakistan. LAW does not only implement awareness-raising advocacy sessions on the above cited law but also defends children, women and marginalized groups placed on trial across Pakistan. Thus, LAW has a two-fold agenda:

1. advocacy on the laws promulgated for children; and

2. adovcacy on individual cases of vulnerable children such as street children of all categories and juveniles facing and convicted of offences punishable by death or mass imprisonment, including blasphemy offence under Section 295 A, B, and C of Pakistan Penal Code 1860.

LAW encourages the implementation of the Juvenile Justice System Act 2018 as well as the Destitute and Neglected Children Act 2004 in light of the United Nations Convention on Child Rights (CRC) which the State of Pakistan ratified and signed in 1990. Laws and regulations on children should be implemented in light of the CRC, particularly in accordance with General Comment No. 10 and 21 construing domestic laws by virtue of Article 37 and Article 6 of the CRC which forbid awarding life imprisonment without parole and death sentences upon children even in rare of rarest circumstances. Despite ratification of the CRC in 1990, there were instances where Pakistan both sent under-aged children to the gallows or murdered them extra judicially in police custody or subjected them to extreme violence. LAW is committed to challenging brutality and violence of all forms usually inflicted upon children and marginalized people at all levels of the society and system of criminal justice.

Date founded

1999             

Structure type

NGO             

Contact informations