Passed in January 2025, amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act created a new regulatory authority with powers over social media content and criminalised the spread of what the law defines as online "disinformation." It followed several years of a declining press freedom score and has been challenged by journalist bodies and international rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as overly broad.
Women's political representation runs through the same reserved-seat mechanism covered on PIVRA's Governance & Rule of Law page, 60 seats in the National Assembly allocated to parties by their general-seat vote share. That mechanism has not moved the two sub-scores dragging down Pakistan's overall Gender Gap ranking: Political Empowerment and Economic Participation, both of which measure power and income rather than legal seats held.
Article 20 of the Constitution guarantees the right to profess, practise, and propagate one's religion. Political representation for religious minorities runs through 10 reserved National Assembly seats, also allocated in proportion to general seats won. Both the seat allocation and national planning figures rest on the 2023 census count, which minority-rights advocacy groups have publicly disputed as an undercount.
Pakistan ranks last in the world, 148th of 148 countries, on the Global Gender Gap Index, driven mainly by extremely low economic participation and political empowerment scores, even where legal reserved seats already exist. Legal access to a seat has not translated into parity in power or income.
Pakistan's press freedom rank improved from 158th to 153rd of 180 countries in the most recent index, but that still sits in the bottom third globally, and the improvement comes the same year a new cybercrime law amendment tightened government authority over online speech.
Minority-rights groups have disputed the 2023 census's headline count of non-Muslim populations as an undercount, a measurement problem this Center exists to flag: if the underlying count is wrong, the reserved-seat allocation and planning figures built on it inherit that error.
Examines how generative AI is reshaping communication, education, work, and social trust in Pakistan as internet access expands, and argues that AI's success should be measured by human development rather than productivity alone. Recommends AI social-impact assessments, critical AI literacy, and investment in Urdu-language AI systems.
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