Our methodology is geared towards “Changing the Mindset” of society towards moderation, peace and tolerance.
FHRI is the most experienced organization in Pakistan on training for human rights and democracy. Our training programs have reached over 75,000 teachers, judges, police officers, bureaucrats, and elected local bodies’ representatives, and 170,000 students have been direct beneficiaries of its programs while indirect beneficiaries run into the millions. In recognition of its work the United Nations Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations approved a Special Consultative Status for FHRI in June 2005, making it one of seven Pakistani NGOs ever to have been granted this status. FHRI has also been certified by Pakistan Center for Philanthropy.
Funding
Fazaldad Institute is self funded, and has been largely sustained through contributions by our Founder. From time to time we have done programs with local and international partners, where funding has been shared. We do not solicit donations from the public, but often reach out to friends and family for support on specific projects.
Our Objectives
- Contribute towards fostering a culture of human rights through mass human rights education.
- Change the mindset of the populace to prevent violence against vulnerable groups taking place in the first place.
- Empower Pakistani women, irrespective of caste, creed, religion, or socioeconomic status. To make them and the public aware of their full rights and potential in all spheres of life, specially social, economic, personal and political. To enable women to participate in the decision making process that affects their lives and that of their families.
- Sensitize civil society on all relevant human rights issues, conventions and norms.
- Sensitize the general public on, and to motivate them to comply with, the Islamic injunctions opposing injustice and oppression of the weak and the doctrines promoting and protecting the rights of vulnerable groups.
- Deliver the above in a way that is readily understandable to the most disadvantaged members of society and to have an impact in the most remote parts of the country.
- Remove inequities and imbalances in all sectors of socio-economic development and to ensure women’s equal access to all development benefits and social services.
- Make participants aware that human rights is an integral part of Islam, which is a religion of peace and tolerance.
- Make them understand their rights and responsibilities as members of society.
- Develop values of tolerance, understanding acceptance of differences in opinion.
- Develop problem solving and conflict resolution skills.
Our Name
Fazaldad Institute was named in memory of the late Dr. Fazaldad Wahla, who gave his life so that another may live. In a country where the “honour” killing of women elicits little response and even fewer repercussions, Fazal gave “honour” a new meaning. He was not going to allow a young women to be murdered for some misplaced sense of flouted dignity. He refused to bow to barbarism, tried to reason with the girl’s brutalized, poverty stricken family and gave his own life so that another may live.
Born in 1962, Fazal spent his childhood and youth studying in America. An outstanding tennis player, Fazal was in his final stages of becoming an orthodontist when his father, Chaudhry Abdul Rehman Wahla, MNA passed away. Fazal stood for elections in 1989 becoming one of the youngest Members of Parliament in Pakistan’s history. Subsequently he returned to America to complete his medical studies and became a practicing Orthodontist in Islamabad, where he lived with his wife and two small children aged 2 and 4 at the time of his death in 1999.