In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression stated that all member states have an obligation to ensure unrestricted access to the internet. Since then the global south has worked consistently to claim space online.
It wasn’t until the pandemic that the digital inequality was realized. Between men and women, from professionals to students and on a global level, the shocking levels of access to technology and the digital realm revealed a reality of gross exclusion and staggering inequality.
Keeping this in mind, Pakistani organisations have been actively working to bridge the digital divide, especially in rural areas. During the pandemic, Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) and Bolo Bhi (two digital focused NGOs advocating for access to the internet as a fundamental human right) issued a joint statement asking for elimination of censorship and freedom of access to the internet.
Realizing that the impact of work had to go beyond policy development and real power lay in enabling voices from the ground to online, DRF worked on two pronged approach, organizing training sessions focused on digital skills and online safety with young students across the country but also with marginalized groups like women journalists, activists and CSO under Hamara Internet campaign and developed 50-50, a feminist e-magazine.
“There was a recognition of the need to create a space in the online world for women artists, visual artists and writers to write the stories they couldn’t get space for in traditional media. The impact has been that more and more people in Pakistan are now telling stories in non-traditional means and that too in multi-lingual formats,” said Nighat Dad, founder of DRF.
This, in turn, has led to a new force of communication emerging within the country, opening up a new reality where authenticity and advocacy have a deeper impact than statistics and numbers.
“Before digital storytelling, Pakistanis had no connection with the outside world,” says Minhaj Ahmed Rafi who works as Head of Design at an advertising agency in Lahore. He had previously created digital art for Newsweek Pakistan. “Storytelling was verbal, it was someone else’s story of an experience, not necessarily their way of life. Now, with visuals, videos and different styles of texts, you can ‘see’ stories as they are told. Thoughts and experiences are processed on an individual level creating a personal connection.”
While policy and legislation surrounding the digital realm in Pakistan remains a battlefield, other organizations have actively been working in to bring about a quiet digital revolution to create economic activities on the basis of digital literacy and tech training. This has led to digital storytelling. For the first time, women and marginalized communities have come to the fore and been able to tell their stories for them, by them.
But before the digital world became a contentious battlefield, in 2004, Aysha Baqir set up Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (KCF), currently led by CEO Danish Jabbar Khan. Focusing on gender equity, the NGO worked on female economic empowerment in far flung rural areas located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and South Punjab. Recognizing that any development had to include men as well, KCF has worked tirelessly within the confines of religious and cultural norms to enable more than 25,000 women to earn through their craft via digital storytelling.
In 2018, KCF set up aanganpk.com. This consisted of conducting digital literacy sessions to enable these artisans to earn directly from within their homes via e-shops. The impact of such cognitive access cannot be denied when one sees the microeconomic generation that has ushered in a digital revolution in finance at the rural level.
But then the pandemic hit. And while the entire world went from physical to virtual, these artisans who could not gain access to urban areas for raw material for their craft work nor have access to urban market places to sell their wares, were left forgotten.
Bewildered on what this strange disease was, unable to have access to online spaces to talk about their struggles nor with anyone willing to listen to their difficulties, these women formed the majority who were excluded from the online world. Consequently, KCF decided that if the world wasn’t going to come to these artisans, then these artisans would tell their stories to the world.
Applying their digital literacy skills ,which had been limited to social media presence, KCF worked with training them virtually via apps such as zoom to set up Pakistan’s first development podcast called Kaarvan Conversations. Via this, KCF hosted Pakistan’s first online digital exhibition where artisans came on screen to share how they were making their own hand sanitisers since medical supplies were simply not available in rural areas.
Speaking from within their homes, for the first time, rural women were telling stories about how their lives had been impacted by the pandemic and the limited conditions within which they made handcrafted items.
“We connect to one another through stories. When we bravely share our lived experiences of joy and struggle there is a sense of coming alive and belonging. I contain so many stories of these rural women in me. Honouring the sacred nature of stories—both those we share and those we hear—means recognizing that we’ve been entrusted with something valuable that deserves respect and care. I would say the phrase “wholehearted living” is representative of these women. I have observed growth and change in the women as well as in the men – stepping up to become male champions raise their voice on justice and greater gender equality. When these rural women bravely share their stories, which is interwoven with their indigenous craft, not only do they connect with their fellow artisan-entrepreneurs locally, but also touch hearts of global viewers who see their stories of beauty and resilience and want to affiliate themselves with regeneration of cultural heritage,” said Mashal Khan, Head of Strategic Communication Department at KCF.
Beyond enablement of cognitive and cultural access as well as generation of economic activity for women via their lived experiences, marginalized ethnicities and religious minorities have also come forth in the digital realm, telling their stories of lived experiences, survival and advocacy for their rights.
In 2022, Nawab Hassan Hussain Qureshi set up ‘Seraikast,’Pakistan’s first podcast in the Seraiki language to raise awareness of the racism faced by the Seraiki people and to advocate for the realisation of a Seraiki province. This ushered in a movement where the Seraiki people – men and women – were able to forge meaningful connections and conduct impactful conversations. This was particularly evident when those working at the rural level came onto the podcast to talk about issues related to public policy and legislation as well as the exploitation and exclusion farmers in that region faced in agriculture and natural resources such as water.
“One of the main reasons for starting Seraikast, was to talk about the history of Seraiki movement, the language, people, culture which the more I looked at it, shockingly did not exist in the digital realm. This podcast was born at the time of the pandemic when more and more people were using digital platforms to learn and I felt it was important to talk about my history, my people and the land that I come from.
I was lucky to connect with incredible people and in this day and age of technology and people having access to the digital realm, it was brilliant to connect with people at the grassroots level and from around the world. We also learned about the racism we have faced for years. Most importantly it was a way to pay homage to my father because he was above and beyond everything else a proud Seraiki. Everything I know about our people and land is because of him.” said Qureshi.
Working tirelessly at the grassroots level in South Punjab, Dr. Nukhbah Langah has taken her work onto the digital realm. She has created connections digitally on a regional and international level with Seraiki people globally who talk about their stories and links to the ‘wasaib’ (the region where Seraiki is spoken). which led to the creation of the Taj Langah Digital Archive on Facebook.
This platform founded by Dr. Langah, describes its role as a “digital forum is dedicated to Siraiki history, language, culture, identity and above all, oral history.” Through online webinars and documentation of the Seraiki language, Dr. Langah is a one-woman army, dedicated to raising awareness of the socio-economic and human rights plight of the region.
Such kind of institutional access has not just allowed intellectual debate to take place, removing obstacles that hinder conversation in offline spaces, but also brought forth gender equality in terms of who tells the stories and enables others to do so as well.
Religious communities too, such as the Shias, have taken to the digital world to talk about their lives and the persecution they face. Prior to the video stories coming out of wars today, one of the impacts of the Iraq war was enabling the Shia minority to utilize technology for storytelling. This spurred on a similar reaction in Pakistan.
While cassettes were once used to connect with their religious beliefs and Shia scholars located elsewhere, today, Pakistani Shias have taken to social media accounts to not just share their beliefs online but also narrate stories of how and why they believe in what they do and the persecution they face from state and non-state actors.
One such account is Hussain-i-Khayal founded and run by Hussain Ali Shah. Born and bred in Lahore, Shah hails from the village of Shah Jeevna near Jhang, a hotbed of sectarian violence. Shah has worked tirelessly to tell the story of the Shias in Pakistan, documenting not just what the Shia belief is, but also mapping the attacks on Shias across the country. He has also narrated his own experiences of persecution as a Shia in other countries via Instagram.
This year he decided to tell the story of Shah Jeevna and how it has peacefully stood against sectarianism especially during the sensitive month of Muharram where Muslims globally commemorate Imam Hussain’s martyrdom. Narrated by Shah and his father Syed Asim Ali, one of the key aspects of the documentary is how the story of women’s role as a progressive force in not just Islam but also in maintaining peace in Shah Jeevna is explained by Hussain’s mother, Munazza Ali.
Such storytelling not only finally shifts from tired narratives or content that used to conduct attacks but opens up a new realm of reality grounded in facts and gender equality, both of which are necessary in today’s world of hate speech, disinformation and misinformation. But will this access enable more acceptability or is there still a long way to go? Maria Umar, founder of Women’s Digital League (2009) thinks while a foundation of digital storytelling has been laid, there is more to be done.
“Good work has been done in the past decade. Many voices have come to the forefront and been heard and repeated and that is wonderful. But where we are today, there are several things to consider. We still don’t have enough women in tech at higher positions. While there are a lot of young women in software houses and other tech based companies doing great work but they still don’t have that many role models to look upto. Women have been doing a lot of substantial work in tech sector from running business accelerators to founding VC firms and to heading software association to becoming CEOs of internationally acclaimed tech businesses but their raw, vulnerable stories are not told through the digital medium.
Two things need to happen here. One, these women who have succeeded at their tech careers and reached important markers need to move onto the next stage and take leadership roles. This will be done by taking intentional steps to bring more women into tech through the establishment of a connection such as mentorship to encourage more women to enter tech. The other is we need more stories of such women – the challenges they faced and how they navigated a very male-dominated sector – who can encourage younger females to take ownership of their narratives to empower them on career development and choices, and to see tech as a viable career path for themselves.”