Launch of Youth-led Observatory on Freedom of Religious Beliefs in Pakistan

After a year-long exercise to train university students on interfaith harmony and social peace, Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) selected a pool of 50 young observers to monitor freedom of faithviolations and hate speech. A two-day training and orientation session was conducted on 27-28 Marchin Islamabad where they were introduced to the web observatory developed by PIPS IT team. Thetraining commenced with an awareness session on legislative framework on faith-based rights inPakistan. PIPS team provided a training manual to the students. Dr. Fizza Batool, a Research Associate at PIPS, explained definitions of key concepts to the students such as minorities, interfaith harmony, hate speech etc.