Arfana Mallah ( ur, عرفانہ ملاح) is a Pakistani

Human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

activist, leader of the

Women's Action Forum Women's Action Forum (WAF) is a women's rights organization in Pakistan. History Women's Action Forum (WAF) was established in Karachi in September, 1981 University of Sindh The University of Sindh ( ur, ; sd, سنڌ يونيورسٽي; informally known as Sindh University) is a public research university in Pakistan located in the city of Jamshoro. It is one of the oldest universities in Pakistan and was certifi ...

, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan.

Education

Arfana BegumMallah received a master's degree in chemistry from

Quaid-i-Azam University Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad ( ur, ; commonly referred to as QAU), founded as University of Islamabad, is a ranked 1 public research university in Islamabad, Pakistan. Founded as the University of Islamabad in 1967, it was initially dedi ...

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...

in 1998, a M.Phil in analytical Chemistry in 2002 and a PhD in Chemistry in 2012 from the

University of Sindh The University of Sindh ( ur, ; sd, سنڌ يونيورسٽي; informally known as Sindh University) is a public research university in Pakistan located in the city of Jamshoro. It is one of the oldest universities in Pakistan and was certifi ...

Jamshoro Jamshoro ( sd, ڄام شورو, ur, ) is a city and the capital of Jamshoro District, located in Sindh, Pakistan. It is located on the right bank of the Indus River, approximately northwest of Hyderabad and northeast from the provincial cap ...

Career

, Mallah is a professor at the Dr. M. A. Kazi institute of Chemistry, University of Sindh at Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan. Mallah has been active in teachers' trades unionism since she joined the University of Sindh as a lecturer. She was the first elected female General Secretary of Sindh University Teachers association (SUTA) and was re-elected for a record further four terms of office. She was also elected as a member of Sindh University syndicate twice and was the first female elected member of it. She writes columns in

Sindhi language Sindhi ( ; , ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 30 million people in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where it has official status. It is also spoken by a further 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language, withou ...

dailies and has been hosting talk shows at different TV channels for two decades, her book about stories of internally displaced women has been published in Sindhi and Urdu .

Activism

Mallah is a women's rights activist. She and Amar Sindhu started a chapter of

Women's Action Forum Women's Action Forum (WAF) is a women's rights organization in Pakistan. History Women's Action Forum (WAF) was established in Karachi in September, 1981 Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai ( ur, , , pronunciation: ; born 12 July 1997), is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second P ...

shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Indian

Kailash Satyarthi Kailash Satyarthi (born 11 January 1954) is an Indian social reformer who campaigned against child labor in India and advocated the universal right to education. In 2014, he was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yo ...

, Mallah urged the government to declare December 10 as 'Malala Day' and to organize a country-wide celebration. In 2015, Mallah organized the ‘Stop killing women’ campaign in Hyderabad via the WAF. The campaign issued a report, "WAF’s social FIR", which mentioned crimes against women in Sindh in 2014 and 2015. The report claimed that hundreds of women were killed in different cases of kidnapping, gang rapes, honour killing, domestic violence, sexual assault and suicides. She wrote a series of short stories about women who had been displaced in the

2010 Pakistan floods The floods in Pakistan began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and, Balochistan regions of Pakistan, which affected the Indus River basin. Approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's tot ...

which were published in the Sindhi daily newspaper ''

Daily Kawish ''Daily Kawish'' is a Sindhi-language daily newspaper in Pakistan. History The newspaper was founded in 1990 and is part of the Kawish Group of Publication. Muhammad Aslam Kazi is the newspaper's founder. It is the only newspaper that is publis ...

''. Mallah has been part of the Programme Management Committee of the Khanabadosh Writers’ Cafe opened in 2015, in Sindh Museum, Hyderabad, as a place to promote free thought and pluralism. She organized a week long, literary programme called Ayaz Festival, about the poet Shaikh Ayaz at the Cafe with her team in December, 2015. In 2019 and 2020, on International Women's Day (8 March), Mallah organized and led the Aurat Azadi March (Women's Freedom March) in Sindh. For the last twenty years, Mallah and Sindhu have faced threats from men in academia and landlords due to their activism. In 2020, the International Federation for Human Rights issued an urgent appeal for intervention in a smear campaign against Mallah. After two weeks of harassment, she was forced to issue a public apology.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mallah, Arfana Living people Sindhi people Year of birth missing (living people) Pakistani women activists Pakistani feminists Pakistani women's rights activists