Our Mission
Dastak’s mission is to support women and children who are victims of violence or of denial of human rights and fundamental freedoms and to make available to them adequate protection and support services in situations of crisis. These services are directed towards facilitating their access to justice through provision of legal aid and other necessary interventions to ensure their protection, care and rehabilitation.
The overriding concern of the Trust is that protection and services to such women and children should be provided in a manner that recognizes and respects their right to liberty, dignity and safeguards their best interest. Its long term objective is to provide political support to women and child rights and to give them confidence in the legitimacy as these rights as well of the efforts to attain them.
The organization also subscribes to the critically important objective of institutionalizing this concept among State and non-state actors and to put in place a comprehensive protection system for women and children at national and sub-national levels.
Our History
In response to the needs of women in distress, human rights activist and lawyer Hina Jilani established Dastak in Lahore in 1990 with the objective to provide immediate safe haven to women escaping violence and in need of protection.
Dastak started as a project of AGHS Legal Aid Cell, a legal aid organization cofounded by Hina Jilani. Within six years this transformed from a project into an institution. Dastak was set up in 1996 as an independent legal entity and has since provided services to over 17000 women, girls and children through its various programs.
Today Dastak not only runs a legal aid program and model emergency shelter, it also carries out extensive advocacy on legal rights and law reform and training of practitioners for the creation and promotion of effective women and child protection systems in the country.