In March 2003, a Pakistani neuroscientist, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and her three children disappeared from a crowded street in Karachi. Five years later, she mysteriously reappeared, but this time in U.S. custody. She was convicted of killing American personnel in Afghanistan in a trial that raised concerns about due process and Pakistan’s silence in defending its own citizens. Thirteen years later, a young social media star, Fouzia Azeem, known better under her alias Qandeel Baloch, was strangled to death by her brother, Muhammad Waseem Azeem, in an “honor killing” in Multan, Punjab. In 2022, he walked free. Two women. Two different contexts. Yet, both reveal a troubling pattern of the Pakistani state’s failure to protect women’s rights and uphold its legal obligations.

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