“Come, walk seven steps with me, and then you can shoot me.” These were the final words of Bano Bibi before she and Ihsan Ullah were executed by order of a tribal council, locally known as a jirga, in the southwestern Pakistan province of Balochistan for an alleged extramarital relationship. The murders were filmed and widely circulated on social media in July 2025, drawing global attention to Pakistan’s persistent problem of so-called honor killings.
Such extrajudicial killings are not an anomaly in a country where approximately 1,000 women are murdered in the name of “honor” every year. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded 405 such cases in 2024 alone, with many more never reported.
The Balochistan killings are not simply another incident in Pakistan’s long record of gender-based violence. They are a test case that exposes the limitations of international law when a State strategically chooses to ignore its treaty obligations. Despite repeated warnings by international monitors about the anti-women practices of the jirgas, the government has maintained a calculated silence. When the video footage of Bano’s killing went viral globally, the government was left with no choice but to condemn the jirga’s actions and make arrests.
But what does this sudden outrage mean when it comes from the very State that legitimized these councils without legal or judicial oversight? Pakistani officials have attended jirga meetings, treating them as legitimate authorities and relying on them for political purposes, an expediency upon which the government is reliant given the significant local support for the jirgas. The current response is not a genuine policy shift, but a politically calculated gesture intended to deflect responsibility.
The question is no longer whether these jirgas violate the law; the Pakistani Supreme Court has confirmed that they do. The real question is whether international law has anything meaningful to offer in holding a State accountable when it refuses to protect its citizens from violence by groups it allows to operate. The Balochistan case should compel the international legal community to confront this reality, and to take action now to ensure that the tools that are available to hold the State to account are utilized.
The Jirga System as a Stress Test for International Law
Jirgas are male-only tribal councils that have operated for centuries in Pakistan’s tribal and rural regions, resolving disputes through local customs. After independence in 1947, Pakistan recognized these councils as culturally legitimate institutions; however, it did not establish any kind of regulatory framework defining their scope, providing for oversight, or otherwise establishing constraints upon them. By preserving jirgas outside the rule of law, the State authorized parallel systems that have subjected women to systemic violence and patriarchal control.
The jirgas’ decisions routinely impose unlawful and inhumane punishments, such as ordering gang rape as retribution, sanctioning , and exchanging girls through vani or swara as compensation for tribal disputes, for instance as reparation for crimes committed by male family members. These are not aberrations but part of a well-documented pattern spanning decades.
After years of public pressure and documented abuses, in 2019, the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared jirgas unconstitutional and incompatible with Pakistan’s international commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (the latter two of which are binding). The Court allowed jirgas to function only as voluntary civil mediation forums, strictly barring them from exercising criminal jurisdiction or coercive authority.
Successive governments have also used these international commitments rhetorically to project Pakistan as a modern, rights-respecting State, even as domestic practices have systematically undermined those obligations.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, these international and constitutional commitments have not translated into meaningful change in practice. Law enforcement remains absent in most jirga-related cases, particularly when women are the victims of violence. Police intervention is rare unless media coverage or public outrage forces it. The ongoing operation of jirgas in clear defiance of constitutional and international prohibitions illustrates the State’s deliberate choice. Women’s safety is routinely sacrificed to preserve political alliances and avoid disruption in peripheral regions.
This persistent non-compliance is not merely a domestic failure. It exposes the structural limitations of international human rights law.
State Responsibility and the Collapse of the Due Diligence Standard
Pakistan’s continued tolerance of jirgas’ unlawful practices that victimize women is a breach of its binding obligations under CEDAW (ratified on 12 March 1996) and ICCPR (ratified on 23 June 2010). Article 2 of CEDAW obligates States to eliminate discrimination against women without delay. Article 2 specifically calls on States to ensure that “public authorities and institutions act in conformity with this obligation” and to take measures to “modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.” CEDAW’s treaty body (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) first clarified in General Recommendation No. 19 that gender-based violence constitutes discrimination under the Convention. General Recommendation No. 35, later expanded this interpretation by introducing a due diligence standard, requiring States to prevent, investigate, prosecute, punish gender-based violence, and provide reparations to victims.. Although the general recommendations of treaty bodies are generally not binding as a matter of international law, they are highly instructive in elucidating the meaning of a treaty. Similarly, the ICCPR requires States to protect the right to life, ensure equality before the law, and provide effective remedies. The treatment of women by jirgas constitutes clear discrimination under CEDAW and violates the ICCPR’s guarantee of equality before the law.
The obligations established by the CEDAW and the ICCPR are binding duties that cannot be evaded by delegating authority to jirgas or tolerating their existence in practice while prohibiting them on paper. Indeed, article 2 of CEDAW explicitly calls on States to modify or abolish customs or practices that constitute discrimination against women, which would include impermissible activities carried out by the jirgas.
International jurisprudence defines due diligence clearly. In Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras (1988), the Inter-American Court held that States bear responsibility when they knew or should have known of private acts of violence and failed to act with the means available to prevent or punish them. Specifically, the Court stated that an illegal act that violates human rights, even if undertaken by a private person, “can lead to international responsibility of the State . . . because of the lack of due diligence to prevent the violation or to respond to it as required by the Convention.” The Court included in its consideration all preventive means, whether legal, administrative, or cultural. In Opuz v. Turkey (2009), the European Court of Human Rights found that continued tolerance of gender-based violence violated obligations under the European Convention. The CEDAW Committee in A.T. v. Hungary (2005) held that failure to intervene despite foreseeable harm breached the State’s duty. Although these findings are not directly binding on Pakistan, they clearly illustrate a consistent and straightforward principle: that due diligence requires proactive prevention, not reactive responses.
However, Pakistan’s conduct falls far short of that standard. Authorities knew about the killing of Bano weeks before it reached public attention, yet they took no official action until the video became impossible to ignore. The subsequent suspension of a deputy superintendent for failing to report the incident confirms this was not a gap in knowledge but an institutional choice to shield perpetrators and the systems that enable them.
The CEDAW committee formally warned the State in 2013, and again in 2020 about jirga-perpetrated violence and inadequate due diligence measures. Additionally, in 2017, the UN Committee Against Torture highlighted how jirgas had imposed violent punishments on women, calling on the State to ensure these parallel mechanisms are not sanctioned by authorities. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and domestic human rights reports have documented these violations for decades. Despite this extensive documentation and repeated warnings, Pakistan continues accommodating jirgas.
The Balochistan case exposes both the State’s deliberate inaction and the international system’s limitations in holding States accountable. Treaty commitments become meaningless when States choose political defiance over legal protection.
Political Expediency Over Protection
Jirgas have maintained customary administrative structure and social control in their respective regions. Their deep-rooted communal authority and unwavering local acceptance make them indispensable allies for modern governance.
Successive Pakistani governments have repeatedly avoided challenging jirga practices, viewing them as strategic partners in maintaining local stability and security. For instance, in April 2025, a Grand Peace Jirga convened in Dera Ismail Khan, attended by tribal elders, religious figures, and the Pakistan Army, publicly declared support for the Army’s counterterrorism efforts. The jirga’s endorsement reflects how jirgas enjoy de facto recognition and continued operational freedom, reinforcing their role in sustaining order in these regions.
Additionally, these tribal and feudal elites serve as electables who dominate key constituencies through wealth, patronage, and coercion. This makes political parties dependent on their electoral power across rural areas of Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, Balochistan, and southern Punjab.
Further, the jirga system has historically enabled the State to delay the costly and administratively complex process of extending formal judicial infrastructure to tribal regions, where jirgas remained the default dispute-resolution mechanism due to the absence of constitutional courts.
Jirgas do not persist by accident; their continued operation reflects a political trade-off that prioritizes strategic convenience over women’s legal protection.
Structural Neglect as State Policy
Pakistan’s complicity also includes its failure to create even the most basic infrastructure to protect women from foreseeable harm. Those threatened by jirgas have nowhere to turn because they have highly limited access to safe shelters, relocation assistance, or witness protection – all services that the government ought to provide.
Additionally, law enforcement continues to rely on family-initiated complaints, even in cases where families are complicit, coerced, or unwilling to act. For the Balochistan incident, Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti himself admitted that no first information report (FIR) was filed, saying: “Not a single person is ready to come forward as a victim in this case or file an FIR.” In Pakistan, an FIR is a formal complaint that triggers the criminal investigation process, and without it, the police have limited authority to investigate or prosecute such cases.
This reflects not legal restraint, but a willful disregard for the State’s international obligations. Under ICCPR and CEDAW, the duty to investigate and prosecute gender-based violence lies squarely with the State, not private individuals. Requiring family complaints in such cases, even where the State has clear information regarding a violation, breaks this standard and systematically denies women protection that the State is arguably obligated to provide them under international law.
Legislation without Enforcement
Pakistan’s failure to provide preventive infrastructure is mirrored in its legislative approach. The State’s response to gender-based violence is consistently reactive, triggered by public outrage rather than grounded in structural reform. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act (2021) followed the 2020 motorway gang rape; the Zainab Alert Act (2020) followed the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari; and came only after Qandeel Baloch’s murder shocked the nation.
Such reactive laws serve more as diplomatic cover to shield against international scrutiny than as a genuine commitment to structural reforms. In practice, these laws have had little measurable impact, with limited prosecutions, weak monitoring mechanisms, and persistent gaps in victim protection. Women in rural and tribal regions remain exposed to extrajudicial systems that operate beyond the reach of the law, regardless of these legislative acts. Symbolic compliance sustains Pakistan’s international legitimacy while maintaining domestic structures that systematically endanger women.
Public and political opinion on jirgas remains deeply divided. In regions where jirgas operate, surveys show that many people prefer them because they are viewed as faster, cheaper, and more culturally familiar than formal courts. More recent Gallup data indicates that a significant majority of those aware of the system consider jirga decisions fair. This localized acceptance, combined with inconsistent political messaging, reduces societal pressure for reform and contributes to weak enforcement of laws intended to restrict jirgas’ authority.
Conclusion: From Reactive Condemnation to Proactive Enforcement
The Balochistan case exposes not only Pakistan’s complicity but also the structural limitations of international law when States strategically choose non-compliance. Of course, limited enforcement of international law is not a new problem, nor necessarily a unique one within the wider international legal order. However, these failings present a particularly acute and painful problem in the context of the jirgas, and one that should trigger wider changes. When repeated diplomatic warnings fail, as they have with Pakistan regarding violence perpetrated by jirgas, the international community must deploy stronger enforcement mechanisms. And indeed, there are such mechanisms available to international organizations and States – and they should exercise them now.
The CEDAW Committee should initiate an Article 8 inquiry under the Optional Protocol, as it did for femicides in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, allowing for on-site investigations to document how jirgas operate with State complicity. Given the pattern of systematic violations, the CEDAW Committee could place Pakistan under enhanced follow-up procedures with shortened reporting cycles and specific benchmarks focused exclusively on dismantling jirga authority over criminal matters.
The United Nations Human Rights Council could appoint a Special Rapporteur on parallel justice systems with a mandate to examine how informal tribunals worldwide perpetuate gender-based violence. This would recognize parallel justice as a distinct category of violation requiring specialized monitoring. Additionally, the EU through its GSP+ scheme (the European Union’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences, from which Pakistan derives significant trade benefits) should strengthen enforcement of its human rights conditions. Because a substantial portion of Pakistan’s export revenues depends on GSP+ and a large share of its EU exports benefits from the scheme, stricter enforcement would significantly increase the costs of non-compliance. This, in turn, would place real economic and diplomatic pressure on the State to undertake meaningful reform. At the same time, bilateral donors and the World Bank could implement gender protection conditions on its assistance, linking development aid to measurable progress in dismantling discriminatory justice systems.
When women are walked to their deaths with the world watching, international law must offer more than words. It must deliver protection with power.
