Da Hawwa Lur – FreeFrom

About the Organization Contact and Service Areas Successes and Impact Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security Survivor Leadership Understanding Economic Harm in Context

About the Organization

Country

Pakistan

Number of survivors served in a year

101 to 500

Languages

English Urdu

Groups most commonly served

Members of the LGBTQIA+ community Rural communities Women

Type of organization

Nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO)

Program model(s)

Holistic crisis response Rights-based economic justice Survivor-centered income generation Systemic change through strategic partnerships Transforming social norms through community-building

Contact and Service Areas

Service Area(s)

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Successes and Impact

“We were very successful in building a community and a safe space for women. Now, for example, if we [no longer work] in a community, we know that there is a space and a circle of women there. There is a space where they can actually now talk about the issues.”¹

Da Hawwa Lur helps survivors take control of their financial futures, equipping them with practical skills, connecting them with resources, and championing them as they pursue transformative advocacy efforts to support others in their communities.

Building safe, thriving communities for survivors

The organization works collaboratively with survivors to help create spaces where survivors can talk about their issues and support one another. Solidarity with survivors sparks a powerful transformation—once women begin opening up, they find the confidence to share their stories and take action, including by formally seeking the legal support they deserve.

Survivor-led policy advocacy

Da Hawwa Lur has driven groundbreaking legislative wins in recent years, from anti-harassment protections to domestic violence laws and rights for home-based workers. Their secret to success is a survivor-led approach: “[The home-based workers policy] became possible only because women home-based workers themselves were very much involved in the whole process,” says the organization.

“We were not the ones who were talking on their behalf or having a dialogue with the parliamentarians,” Da Hawwa Lur points out. “Policy advocacy does not have any impact unless and until the women themselves are talking. So the women became the leaders themselves. They were talking about the issues they were facing. They were talking about their health concerns and the harassment they were facing at the hands of the middleman.”

Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security

“We realized that a lot of women are doing wonderful things, but they don’t have access to the wider market. Their access was limited to the local rural markets where the product was sold for hardly $1. They would be spending a lot of time on one thing, and it would just go for $1 or $2.”

About the Program

Da Hawwa Lur leveraged technology to strengthen survivors’ economic security through their Digital Skill Development Training Program for women home-based workers in northwestern Pakistan from 2018 to 2019. Through joint advocacy initiatives with home-based workers, the organization noticed that many of these entrepreneurs—survivors among them—could not access customers for their handmade products beyond their local markets, limiting their income.

Da Hawwa Lur addressed this gap by designing and delivering tailored training on technology use, digital literacy, and e-commerce. This allowed these entrepreneurs to enhance their online business presence, reach new customers, and bypass middlemen through direct online sales. Technology transformed survivors’ businesses and maximized their profits, which is an important step on the road to financial security.

Program Development and Key Strategies

Da Hawwa Lur identified the following strategies as crucial to the success of the Digital Skill Development Training Program:

Creativity and flexibility to meet participant needs
Community-oriented approach
Partnerships to provide holistic support

Creativity and flexibility to meet participant needs

The organization changed core components of their program over time in response to participants’ needs. Ultimately, their creativity and willingness to iterate drove the program’s success.

Meeting survivors where they are

The first survivor cohort—rural women in their late thirties to late forties—were unfamiliar with computers and had limited literacy, meaning basic instruction on computer skills had to be adapted.

“We had to start from scratch,” Da Hawwa Lur comments, “telling them what the mouse is, what the CPU is, and we had to translate everything, like ‘mouse,’ into Urdu.” The organization found innovative ways to continue the training, using drawings, visual aids, and practical learning, which proved to be effective in progressing participants’ skills.

Providing access to equipment alongside programming

After a few months, the women in the program expressed interest in uploading their products online but did not have access to electricity, the internet, computers, or laptops. To meet this need, Da Hawwa Lur set up a center at their office where survivors could use equipment and receive support with uploading materials and researching new trends.

Moving programming closer to survivors

Once the incubation center was running, Da Hawwa Lur realized that many survivors struggled to access the space. Some women were not allowed to leave their villages, while others could not take the day off because of other responsibilities at home. In response, and with the help of a former program participant who agreed to host trainings at her home, the organization brought the program directly to survivors, setting up shop in the local village where many of them lived.

This pivot proved to be fruitful: because the former program participant was a trusted neighbor in the community, the men of the village allowed their wives and daughters to attend the trainings. Da Hawwa Lur recalls: “We made sure that we could accommodate as many women as we could, but obviously there were a lot of girls who really wanted to attend the course. And we saw that a lot of girls would literally stand at the door just because they wanted to learn. We were short on space as well. But that’s how we moved our course to that specific village to make sure that women had easy access.”

Community-oriented approach

The program’s success also stemmed from deep and respectful engagement with survivors and local communities.

Collaboration with trusted community focal points

Da Hawwa Lur notes that, in many rural communities, certain elderly women act as mediators between couples, matchmakers, or religious teachers. These women are trusted figures and their households are considered safe spaces for all women to go without restriction. Conducting programming through these focal points and within their households opened needed pathways and helped the organization gain trust and credibility with community members.

Survivor-led programming

The trainings were run by both professional trainers and survivors from the local communities with certifications in the specific areas of the training modules, increasing community buy-in and strengthening capacity for the program beyond what Da Hawwa Lur alone could provide.

Partnerships to provide holistic support

Partnerships have allowed Da Hawwa Lur to provide complementary services to survivors, supporting them in other areas of their lives as they continue to build economic security. These services include:

Offering psycho-legal services to survivors through a partner institution to address issues such as inheritance, harassment, domestic and sexual violence, and medical counseling.
Facilitating referrals to a regional private shelter.
Supporting survivors with low literacy levels in developing business plans that help them apply for grants from institutions that work with small enterprises.

Survivor Leadership

“What we believe more than anything is that you learn and grow through your own experiences. And that’s why we prefer women and girls from the communities rather than women and girls with a lot of education or experience in the professional setting because that guides how we have to devise our programs and plans in the future.”

Da Hawwa Lur credits much of their success to the involvement of survivors from the communities they work with in both their decision-making and day-to-day functions. The organization’s board consists of survivors of early marriages, forced marriages, and domestic violence. Their team is also composed of cisgender women survivors from rural communities and trans women who joined the organization after receiving psycho-legal support services.

Understanding Economic Harm in Context

Da Hawwa Lur’s work and programming are designed to address diverse forms of economic harm and gender-based violence prevalent in rural northwestern Pakistan. The organization observes that rigid socio-cultural norms and long-standing beliefs about gender and sexuality influence the experiences and opportunities afforded to women, girls, and transgender individuals in their province. The following key factors shape how survivors experience economic harm in their region:

Gender and religious norms impact women’s literacy and access to economic resources
Certain customs limit cisgender women’s mobility and economic autonomy
Transgender individuals face violence and economic harm despite protective legislation

Gender and religious norms impact women’s literacy and access to economic resources

Patriarchal beliefs from a neighboring country impact women’s and girls’ access to education

“Our region shares a border with Afghanistan, and [influence from a fundamentalist political group] has a direct impact on our region,” Da Hawwa Lur says. “This similar mindset exists in our communities as well, where girls’ education is considered anti-religious or not according to our norms.” These restrictions have further exacerbated the already low literacy rates for women in the province.²

Low literacy rates negatively impact survivors’ economic security

Limited literacy affects women’s ability to participate in trainings and also prevents them from obtaining important documents such as a National Identity Card, which Da Hawwa Lur notes is crucial for accessing government assistance programs, bank accounts, and other services.

Certain customs limit cisgender women’s mobility and economic autonomy

Patriarchal traditions trap survivors in economic insecurity

“Working with the survivors . . . we have found that almost every woman who wanted to leave a toxic partner or household took years before making the final decision because of economic insecurity,” Da Hawwa Lur says. The organization notes that “the women from the rural areas especially had gone through IPV along with the cultural practices of bride price and swara—giving the girl in marriage to another family to resolve conflicts created by men.” Additionally, Da Hawwa Lur has also observed the continuation of other patriarchal practices, such as restricting the types of spaces women are allowed to enter and depriving women of their right to inheritance.

Family and community customs restrict cisgender women’s mobility and financial freedom

Da Hawwa Lur comments: “In [this region], the family structure is mostly a joint family structure where the husband and wife live with other members of the extended family . . . The mother-in-law has all kinds of power to control a woman in terms of finances, in terms of whatever she wants to wear, in terms of wherever she wants to go. So she definitely has to ask her mother-in-law if she’s allowed to go out, if she’s even allowed to go to her mother’s place, if she’s allowed to interact with someone.”

Home-based workers lack control over their own finances

Since home-based workers often do not have the means or permission to travel to markets to sell their products, they either receive payment from middlemen as cash—which is directly received by their partners—or they sell products from their own home, and the money is collected by their partners or men in the family. “To be honest, women in general are extremely vulnerable. I would say that it’s so internalized for the women in our region that the money they earn is money for their partners,” Da Hawwa Lur says.

Transgender individuals face violence and economic harm despite protective legislation

Da Hawwa Lur points out that transgender individuals in their province face specific challenges to accessing their rights and economic security.

Legislation fails to protect transgender individuals in Pakistan

In 2018, Pakistan passed a law that gives its citizens the right to be recognized as per their self-perceived gender identity, “that can correspond or not to the sex assigned at birth.”³ The law allows individuals to register their gender identity on official documents such as National Identity Cards, driving licenses, and passports. Additionally, the law prohibits discrimination against transgender individuals in acquiring property as prescribed under the law of inheritance.⁴

Despite this legislation, transgender individuals—notably many trans women in northwestern Pakistan—continue to be subjected to oppression, violence, and honor killings.⁵ Moreover, in 2023, the Federal Shariat Court ruled that provisions of this 2018 law were “un-Islamic,” further stigmatizing the transgender community in Pakistan.⁶

Stigma against trans women obscures intimate partner violence

“In terms of [intimate partner] violence…it’s very much prevalent within the transgender community as well—trans women, specifically,” Da Hawwa Lur comments. “Because they cannot really talk about their partners, they are living in hiding. Their relationships are very secret. They cannot openly talk about the kind of violence they face with their families or anyone around them. So I think that they are the most vulnerable right now in terms of economic control or violence from their partners.”

Notes

Direct quotes are slightly edited for style and flow.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, “Table 12: Literacy Rate, Enrolment and Out of School Population by Sex and Rural/Urban, Census-2023,” 7th Population and Housing Census – Detailed Results, 2023, https://www.pbs.gov.pk/sites/default/files/population/2023/tables/table_12_national.pdf.
Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, No. 13 of 2018, The Gazette of Pakistan, Extraordinary, May 24, 2018.
Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, No. 13 of 2018 (Pakistan).
Victorious Youths Movement, Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance: follow-up to and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, written statement submitted by Victorious Youths Movement, UN HRC, 55^th Sess., Agenda Item 9, UN Doc A/HRC/55/NGO/311 (March 21, 2024), https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/048/37/pdf/g2404837.pdf; Human Rights Watch, Pakistan: Events of 2023, World Report 2024, New York, NY: Human Rights Watch, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/pakistan.
Human Rights Watch, Pakistan: Events of 2023.