Gender-Based Violence is Solvable

work there. Pakistan sees thousands of cases of violence against women every year, from rape and acid attacks to sexual assault, kidnappings, and so called honor killings. There's a growing movement to tackle this. The country's top judge announced earlier this year that more than one thousand courts dedicated to tackling violence against women are going to be set up. A pilot court of this kind was opened in twenty seventeen in Punjab,

Pakistan's most populous province. Local High Court Chief Justice Monsour Ali Shah said at the time that women were the most vulnerable members of society and that one in every three had been a victim of physical or psychological violence. Our Guest Today shares the same goal as Judge Shah, changing the way women are treated in Pakistan, but she uses a different medium. Film. Charmine's films have been hugely influential,

raising awareness and bringing about legislative change. In her Oscar winning film A Girl in the River, Charmine tells the story of Saba Quisera, a young woman who survived an attempted murder at the hands of her father. In her Oscar acceptance speech, Charmine held the then primestair of Pakistan to account for doing something about it, and that actually led to changes in laws protecting women. But Charmaine didn't just want like international audiences to understand the problem. She

wanted to take it to the people most affected. Herself and her team have built a mobile cinema on a truck, and they drive it to communities throughout Pakistan, especially where honor killings are most prevalent, and they host screenings of A Girl in the River and they discuss the changes in the law and how women can advocate for themselves. They show other films too, films to tackle income inequality and climate change, and ethnic relations and religious tolerance as

well as two Oscars. Charmaine has received six Emmys, and in twenty twelve, the government of Pakistan honored her with the Crescent of Excellence, which is the second highest civilian honor of the country, and Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Let's take a listen into her conversation with Ahmed Ali Akbar.

So what is the problem for you and why is it something that you want to address the problem is that men don't see women as their equals, and I feel that film can change that. It can change their outlook, it can change the relationship between a man and a woman, it can change the way they see the potential of a woman. And bringing films into communities and opening up the minds of men and women to the potential of a woman, I feel cinema can change that. So tell

me about the culture of honor killings in Pakistan. Pakistan is a deeply patriarchal, misogynistic country and you have forces

that are pushing and pulling against each other. Now with this generation of young women who are educated, who want rights for themselves, who want to make decisions about their lives, and they don't want their fathers and their brothers and their husbands to do that for them, And so more and more women find themselves standing up and asking for their rights and saying no to things that they don't want to do, and the men, the old God is

pushing back. They don't want to give up the space that they have, and so more and more women are finding themselves being victims of domestic violence or being killed in the name of honor. Honor is this word that is used and thrown a lot around a lot in Pakistan, and the concept is that the honor of a woman rests with the man, and there are all of these unwritten rules that if a woman transgresses some invisible line,

that there will be repercussions for her. For example, a woman asking for a divorce her husband might think that she's dishonoring him and may kill her in the name of honor. A daughter decides to get married to a man of her own, choosing a father decides she's dishonoring him and kills her. So there is no one reason

why women are killed in the name of honor. Women are killed in the name of honor because men decide that a woman has crossed a line and she deserves to be punished, and they're shot, dismembered, buried in unmarked graves and the names are forever forgotten. Tell me about what is it about this problem of honor killing that made you decide that you wanted to tackle it in your films. In order to change the way men see women,

I wanted to bring films into the mix. I wanted men to see women not as victims, but as survivors, as heroes, as women in power, as women who fight back. And the story is a women that I've chosen to tell are exactly those sort of women. Women who are climb mountains, women who are part of the anti terrorism squad, women who have stood up against men and fought and one. And those are the stories that we're capturing on cinema.

And we've built a mobile cinema in Pakistan to take those stories into towns and villages who will never have access to those kind of films. In order to change the way men see women, in order to change the way women are treated, you have to get men to accept women as their equal. You have to get them to look at them and see their worth. And film is one way of opening their eyes to it. And

we're starting at a very young age. We're starting with schools and you know, with community centers, and then into villages and then into towns. And with each film screening that we do, we ask the question, do you think women should go out and work? Do you think women should study? Do you think your mother has the right at home? Do you think your sisters should have the

right to choose a man to marry? You know, these are questions which might seem to the rest of the world is so basic, but so important to ask in a country like Pakistan, because change is not going to come with simply just changing laws. Change is going to come when you change the way people see things and accept things. So you were able to actually show your film A Girl on the River with navashar If, previous

Prime Minister of Pakistan. Can you talk to me about what that was like taking your story to the highest level of government and sort of what impact and conversations. It started in twenty sixteen when I did A Girl in the River The Price of Forgiveness, which was a

film about honor killings. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and the Prime Minister, as part of his congratulatory note to me, said that he would love to screen the film in his office, and so I've immediately jumped at the opportunity because as a filmmaker, we were desperately my team and I were trying to change and impact a loophole in the law in the honor killing law in Pakistan, and so we felt that if we were to screen for the Prime Minister, the right kind

of attention would be given to the subject of the film and perhaps help us get the lakoon and the law closed. And so I accepted, and I went to see the Prime Minister and we had a conversation and he said, why don't we screen the film after the Academy Awards. And I thought to myself, well, if I

don't win, this might never happen. So I pushed for the screening of the film to take place before I left for La, and he screened for his entire cabinet, and at the screening he said something very important which was televised live across the country, that there is no honor and honor killing, and he pledged to change the law on it. And I went off to La and we won the Academy Award, and then in my acceptance speech, I told the billion people watching that the Prime Minister

of Pakistan had pledged to change the law. Because nothing like holding the prime minister accountable in front of billions of people. So when I came back to Pakistan, I worked with the government and with the other activists who had been laying the groundwork for the passage of the law. And I think our film played a small role in lighting kind of having this lightning rod effect in pushing

this legislation forward. And in October twenty sixteen, the lacuna and the law that we wanted changed closed so that men could no longer be forgiven if they committed on our killings that they would have to spend a lifetime

in jail. And of course it was a great victory for us, but the very next day a woman was killed in the name of honor, and then another and another, and we began to think about the fact that passage of the law was one thing, but we really needed to work on changing the way men saw women and

changing the way people saw on our killings. Wow, and that's shocking considering the movement that the anti honor killing activism has made in the law that in a practical level, the effect is not being felt for the women of Pakistan. You cannot change things simply by changing laws. You have to change people's mindsets. You have to change the entire culture of who a woman is, what is her place in society, what is her worth. We still have young girls in homes who are fed food after the young

boys are fed food. You still have young girls staying home so that their brothers can go to school. You still have young girls being married off when they're literally children. So when you have a society which doesn't value a woman's life, when you have a society which thinks that women are expendable, then honor killings will of course take

root in that kind of a society. And you can make as many laws as possible, But unless you address the issue of how men see women and how women see themselves, women have to see that they too can fight back, that they too have a voice, that they too have the courage to stand up and be part of a movement that makes them feel that they are worthwhile, that they're not expendable. So many women in Pakistan do not report violence because they think that nothing is going

to happen if they report it. That mindset has to change, and in order to do that, you have to change popular culture. You have to invest yourself on the grassroots

in order to bring about a change in thinking. And it's great that we have laws now that protect women, but the people who implement those laws need to know about them, and more and more men need to be sent to prison so that they can be made examples of If a man kills a woman in a town and the neighbors know about it, that he's not gone to jail, there'll be other men who will feel embolded to carry on in his footsteps because they know that

this is not a crime punishable by law. So what are some things that can be done to actually reduce this level of threat towards women. I think change does not come overnight, and it takes a long time. When women are empowered, when they're educated, when they know their rights, they have a voice and can fight back. And now you find that more and more women are choosing to do that. They are choosing to stand up both online

and offline, to ask for their rights. They are choosing to say that no, this will not happen under my watch. I do not agree with this. They're making themselves more aware of their potential and what they can go forward and do. It's not going to happen overnight, but film will play a pivotal role in the way women see their potential. Television in Pakistan the mobile phone, which has

streaming films and televison shows. More and more women have access to that now and they've a window to the outside world, and that is really helping the way they see themselves. The Internet is an equalizer and it's allowing women, even in small towns and villagers, to have conversations with other women about what's happening in their homes, what's happening around them, asking for advice on what to do, on

how to get out of a situation. Facebook groups are starting, chat rooms are starting where women are conversing with each other and that has never happened before. And it's going to be a while before you see the reduction in numbers, but I think that we've taken a first, very important step in getting women aware that they can fight back. One really amazing thing that you do is these mobile

cinemas you set up. Tell me about the process of putting together these mobile cinemas and the impact they've had. I've been making films for well over two decades, and I began to think a few years ago about who was watching these films. Were the people who needed to watch it the most? Did they have access to these films? Would they understand those are the people that needed to watch these women champions? They were the people who needed

to watch men championing women in these films. And so how would I be able to get into towns and villagers to host screenings and take my work there and take the work of other filmmakers there. And after months of brainstorming, we came up with designing a mobile cinema, a large truck that's outfitted with the screen that lights up the night sky and brings people out together in the evenings to watch content together and to have discussions

around it. But Pakistan is a country where you know, in some areas men and women can sit down and watch films together, but in other areas they cannot. And so inside the truck we outfitted it with seats and another screen so that if we were a screening in a conservative area, women could actually watch inside the truck while the men could be watching outside and we could be showing two totally different films to two totally different audiences.

And over the last two years, my mobile cinema has gone to over four hundred locations across Pakistan and we've had incredible feedback from the communities that we've been showing

the films in. We've been invited back again and again, and even in communities where there's been a pushback where they have said that we don't want our women to watch these films because we don't want them to know about their rights, there have been other people who've stepped up and said no, it's important to educate our women and our children and even our men. And we found

that one mobile cinema is not enough. That we need dozens of these cinemas across the country because people are beginning to realize that these vehicles open up the entire world to them. So, when you're in those situations where you know men are pushing back against the mobile cinemas and the information you're giving to women about their rights

and their value, how do you address that. I've always found that communities have to accept you in order for you to bring change, in order for you to introduce films in order for you to bring the mobile cinema. And so when a community decides that they don't want us there, we try and work with partners, nonprofits that may have worked in that community before, or a community leader that might be more open to us coming in, and we use that vehicle to get into that community.

So we have had, you know, situations where the team has been asked to leave, but other people have stepped in and said, let's screen, or we've been asked to leave and we've left that day, you know, to fight the battle another day. The idea is to make the community comfortable, to make them understand that what we're doing will benefit the children because we're showing them films about how to become a firefighter, or what the world looks

like outside their tiny village. We're showing them films that talk about rights and equality, about climate change, about science, about travel, films that they wouldn't normally watch. And so some of these ideas are new to them and ideas that they're afraid of. But if you spend enough time with them, you convince a few people in the community that matter. In the community. The mobile cinema is eventually always allowed back in. Do you plan out discussions or

do you sort of let them happen naturally. I have this wonderful team of young men actually who travel with the Mobile Cinema and who are committed to going from town to town and village to village. They carry with them these feedback forms that are designed so that they can ask the participants who have been their random sampling of them, you know, about the content that they've seen, about some of the messaging in the films, about the

way they see the world. And we use these feedback forms and collate the data from it to see and track what content has resonated with the participants and the people, what films have opened up their eyes, which films may have not had the same impact that we thought that they would. It's you know, it's for us. It's a learning mechanism as well. It's not something that we have you know known, you know, this is uncharted territory for

us as well. We're learning as we go along. We're creating films as we go along, We're changing the feedback forms as we go along, and so with each screening we learned something new. Initially, it was hard for us to screen for women. You know, we wanted to get into the community and screen for the men and the children first gain their trust, then ask the women in the community to come out and watch the films. You know,

I live in work in Pakistan. My end game is forever, and so I need to make sure that I build bridges, that I work with communities that trust me and my team, and that's very important to do. So. I found the guides that you made really informative. You created fourteen of them.

How did you decide which topics to choose? When we began to think about agahi, which means awareness the series as a whole, we wanted to start from the basic to the most complex, and so our very first video was how to file a police report, and then we began to think about other topics domestic violence, inheritance, acid violence, honor killing, sexual harassment, and each video was building upon the previous video. We wanted to introduce different facets to women,

and it's an ongoing project. While we've created fourteen films, we're looking at other topics that women may want help about, may not have clarity about, and it is important for women to know what their legal rights are. So at least that they're aware of their legal rights and where they can go to get help if they need to. And that series has been distributed for free across the country, and we're showing those films two other young women because

young women need to see themselves reflected on screen. They need to see their potential. They need to know that other women have done this so I too can do this, and that is very important. We've also made the videos such that if women are not literate, they just have

to hear something and take things away from it. The films have been screening across the country in schools and colleges, and earlier this year, at a women's march to mark International Women's Day in Karachi, a young woman came up to me and said that a video that we had done about domestic violence had saved her life and that she had finally known that she could go and ask

for divorce. And that's what we're hoping to do, just hoping to use these films to educate women so that they can understand what their way out is, what their rights are, what they can do. So many young women that we've shown the film too had no idea what their marriage contract is about In Pakistan, when you sign your marriage certificate, at most times the right of divorce is scratched out and taken away from a woman, which

is actually against the law. And so when we made a film about the rights of marriage, we made sure to tell women that when they sign their marriage certificate that they should retain the right to divorce. And most women have thought that they didn't even have the right to divorce or that it was automatically taken away from them. And so educating young girls, especially about these things will change the way they see themselves and the way they

interact with people around them. So what are some takeaways of things that listeners can do. I would love to replicate the mobile cinema, both in Pakistan but also outside of Pakistan. So if anybody has a community an area where they think that the mobile cinemas needed, I would love to bring the idea, the blueprint and transfer that to them. And I think that that would be a wonderful way to take our learnings and to take that

to other places. I would love people to watch my films and share the messages of the films and the stories that come out of it. But there's so many other activists around the world, including Pakistan, who are pushing the envelope and learn about their work. Learn about the work of Rakshandanas who is changing child marriage in Pakistan.

Learn the work about Summer Manella who's working on issues about the girl child Malala and the work that she's doing on girl's education, and the bassamad Nan who's working on domestic violence and women in Pakistan in the northern areas. Another takeaway that I would love people to go with is that never underestimate the power of cinema and the way it can change the way children see the world.

So take films out into communities, take them to a local school which is less privileged, take them to a community center, spend time with the children, show them films that will open up their minds and their ideas to the potential of the world. Because I've seen in my own life and in my own career how that has happened, and it can change the way the entire world works.

Charmaine obeyed Tony and her incredible work making and distributing life changing films, and if you missed it before, as she said, you can see and share her work yourself. As well as other brilliant communicators working in the same area. Her Mobile Cinema has toured some of the most remote and poverty stricten regions of Pakistan, with particular focus on

accessing conflict prone regions and the most vulnerable communities. The main ambition of the Mobile Cinema project was to spark conversations questioning pre existing social norms and policies and the supporting environment while spreading a message of hope, peace and tolerance. Well, the proof is in the pudding. I hope you say

that expression in America. What I mean is her team have recently heard from organizers in Bangladesh and also in Syria who are hoping to bring the mobile Cinema there, and they've begun to plan how best to do just that. Solvable is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation, with production by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and

Ruth Barnes from Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Neia LaBelle, Research by Sheer, Vincent, engineering by Jason Gambrel and the great folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by pass Wise and special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fine, Julia Barton, Carl Migliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins, now got solverle