Ms Sherry Rehman

Ghulam Hussain Malik

Shehrbano ‘Sherry’ Rehman, who took over as Pakistan’s minister for information on March 31, 2008, was born in Karachi on December 21, 1960.

Her father worked for years in public education and law, and her mother was the first woman vice president of the State Bank of Pakistan. “I was exposed early on to the idea of women working and public life,” she says. “There was always an expectation to go out and earn your own living.”

Ms Rehman studied art history and politics at the Smith College and University of Sussex in the UK.

Having worked as a senior journalist for two decades, her bold and creative writings made her one of the leading journalists of the country. She has a long experience of working in the print and electronic media, including 10-year stint as editor of a prestigious newsmagazine of Pakistan, ‘Herald.’

She was hounded by the Sindh government under Jam Sadiq for publishing a cover story on the plunder of his home minister. She regularly writes for national and international newspapers and newsmagazines. In 1999, she did a television show on the current affairs as an anchorperson.

After serving as a member of the National Assembly on a reserved seat from 2002 to 2007 representing the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), she was again declared elected on a reserved seat for women from Sindh province on March 6, 2008.

Besides being the secretary information of the PPP, she has also worked as head of the party’s policy and planning wing. In this capacity, she has been coordinating and drafting talking points for the party, for formulating formal party strategy papers on diverse subjects and for shorter current position papers for the leadership. She also headed the team that prepared the PPP manifesto for the 2008 elections.

During her affiliation with the PPP for over half decade, she braved arrests and illegal confinement. She was arrested on April 16, 2005 when the PPP was preparing to receive Asif Ali Zardari, now co-chairman of the PPP, in Lahore. She was also confined with slain PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto at the residence of Senator Latif Khosa in Lahore in November 2007 after the PPP launched countrywide protests against the imposition of November 3, 2007 martial law by General Pervez Musharraf. Foreign and security policies, women rights and media freedom are subjects of her special interest.

Ms Rehman has also worked as subcommittee of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Media and Public Diplomacy for Kashmir. She also worked as a member of the special parliamentary committee on Kashmir and PPP committee on foreign affairs. She led the Pakistani delegation at the conference of Asian parliamentarians on Islamabad Declaration in December 2004.

During the five-year tenure of the previous National Assembly, Ms Rehman tabled various bills on the freedom of media, women empowerment and human rights whereas she was also among architects of the Women Empowerment Bill, Anti-Honour Killings Bill, Domestic Violence Prevention Bill, Affirmative Action Bill and Hudood Repeal Bill five bills tabled by the PPP in the previous National Assembly. She also tabled the Freedom of Information Bill and Press Act, which provided protection to journalists against arrest under the Press Ordinance of 1999.

She vigorously opposed the Defamation Bill of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid regime as well as the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority laws that have largely been described as the regime’s blatant attempt to muzzle the electronic media. She has always been at the forefront of campaigns for better wages for journalists.

Ms Rehman, who served as a member of the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors from 1988 to 1998, also has the honour of representing Pakistan in the UN General Assembly in 1994. She also delivered a lecture at the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University in November 2004 where she authored a chapter on ‘Pakistan’s Encounter with the US: Islamism and the Bomb’ for a Pakistan conference and book of the same title.

In 2003, Ms Rehman delivered a lecture on ‘Rights and Religion’ at seminar on South Asia at the Harvard University in the United States. In December 2004, she chaired a session for the World Bank’s Gender Assessment Strategy as well as the Media and Women Seminar at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute. She was also invited by the prestigious Carnegie Institute for International Peace in Washington to speak on ‘Pakistan Today: Policy Challenges and US Engagement’ in April 2007.

Ms Rehman represented the PPP on Pakistan’s first parliamentary delegation to India in 2003 and also addressed the members of the Lok Sabha, lower house of the Indian Parliament, at the Asian Parliamentary Forum in 2004. Earlier she represented the PPP in a delegation to London under the auspices of the Commonwealth Foreign Office and Britain. She led the PPP delegation to the South Asian Free Media Association Parliamentary Forum at Simla (India) in June 2007. She also led the PPP delegation that visited Washington to call for the UN probe into assassination of the PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto.

On behalf of the residents of Karachi, she had submitted a public-interest petition to the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the Karachi Port Trust and Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency after oil-spill from Tasman Spirit oil-tanker near the Karachi coast in 2003. She had also moved the top court of the country for reservation of 10 per cent job quota for women.

Ms Rehman has been an active proponent for the provision of better access to health and educational resources, particularly for women and children from the lower-income sections of Pakistani society. She is the chairperson of the Lady Dufferin Foundation Trust, the largest non-profit organisation providing subsidised healthcare facilities for women and children in the province of Sindh. In her seven-year term as chairperson, she assisted in the construction of a state-of-the-art seven-storey hospital building of the 100-year old Dufferin Hospital.

She has also served on the board of several educational institutions, namely the University of Sindh and the International School, Karachi as well as the Mohatta Palace Gallery Trust. She is also one of the founding members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Ms Rehman lives between Islamabad, where apart from fulfilling her parliamentary and party obligations she heads the Jinnah Institute, and Karachi, where she is the director of a multimedia design firm and founder of a heritage trust, the Indus Foundation. The Jinnah Institute is a registered non-profit organisation that seeks to strengthen democratic and secular values in the Pakistani community both at home and in the UK through the creation of public space for its objectives. As its founding chairperson, Ms Rehman has held two-week parliamentary orientation workshops in Pakistan for women legislators in 2003, supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

Sherry Rehman is married to renowned banker Nadeem Hussain, who is the president and chief executive officer of Tameer Microfinance Bank. He spent 27 years with Citigroup before initiating Tameer Microfinance Bank that distinguishes itself from other similar institutions by being one of the first nationwide, private, non-NGO transformed, commercially sustainable microfinance institutions in Pakistan. Tameer serves low-income, salaried, self-employed and micro entrepreneurs with a range of financial products designed to allow them grow their businesses and produce significant economic multiplier effects throughout the local economies.

Ms Rehman’s latest book ‘The Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamawar to Paisley’ that she co-authored with Ms Naheed Jafri was published in 2006 by Mapin Publishing, India, and Antique Collectors Club, UK. The book has been selected for the R L Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award for 2006. She will receive her award at the 11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America in Hawaii in September 2008.

She was the first Pakistani to be recognised with an award for independent journalism by the UK House of Lords in its Muslim World Awards ceremony in 2002.