Faisalabad: September 22, 2011. (By Shazia George) Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation (AWAM) in collaboration with Peace and Human Development (PHD Foundation), Centre for Human Rights Education (CHRE) and Development Organization for Social Transformation (DOST) organized a seminar on the theme “Democratic Culture in Pakistan: Practices and Prospects” to mark international day of democracy. As much as 225 men and women from different communities were part of the seminar held at Barkat Pura in Faisalabad on September 13, 2011. Naseem Anthony (Executive Secretary-AWAM), Amina Zaman (Director-ASDP), Nazia Sardar, Iftikhar Ahmad, Arif Ayaz (Workers Party Pakistan), M. Irfan (NSF), Samina Waheed and Amna Ehsan were among the speakers. All the speakers stressed on the practice and promotion of democratic norms within families, organizations, institutions and political parties for building culture of democracy in Pakistan. Naseem Anthony said, “The ultimate goal of the democracy is to uplift the living standard of people through sovereign and responsible government. The prime obligations of a democratic government include; providing equal opportunities and nurturing human rights irrespective of any discrimination, and framing people friendly policies and laws, because the respect and defense of human rights is imperative in order to build peaceful and democratic society.” Nazia Sardar said, “The discrimination and prejudice exists among people of Pakistan on the basis of faith, sex, ethnicity, language and caste, which makes the promotion and implementation of democratic values and principles in families, community, institutes and political parties, and negation of non-democratic traditions extremely important for building democratic culture in Pakistan.” Arif Ayaz said, “The nation has faced different reconciliation policies introduced by the government since the creation of Pakistan, but these policies have no concern with the public, including NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) which was introduced for befitting influential persons including politicians and bureaucrats by withdrawing corruption cases against them.” “Majority of Pakistan’s population consists of working class who are totally unaware about their basic human rights including democratic rights, therefore, there is a need to maintain unity among different circles not only for criticizing govt. policies, but also for initiating struggle towards building democratic and human rights culture in Pakistan,” he added. Iftikhar Ahmad said, “In the democratic system, the protection of the benefits of the people and framing of laws is the prime responsibility of the parliamentarians, but unfortunately these legislatures are indulged in criticizing each other’s political parties just to oblige their parties’ heads rather than discussing the real issues of Pakistan including inflation, poverty, unemployment, lawlessness and speedy justice.” Amina Zaman said, “The civil society as an institution is the first one which agitates upon violation of human rights, and non-serious attitude of rulers.” “The civil society organizations must launch awareness and sensitization programs at a larger scale in order to educate public about democracy, good governance, importance of vote and election process,” she stressed.