Find a partner in Pakistan: everything you need to know

DID YOU KNOW...

• Over 50 languages are spoken in Pakistan. Although only 7.5% of the population speaks the national language of Urdu as its mother tongue, it is widely understood. The majority of Pakistani citizens are multilingual, with educated citizens commonly speaking three languages. [1]
• 57 Top in the World awards for the CIE O and A level examinations were won by Pakistani students in the 2009-2010 session! Students from Pakistan achieved the highest marks in the world in 30 different syllabuses, in subjects as varied as Physics, Art and Literature. [2]
• Pakistanis are some of the most generous contributors to charity in the world. According to a Gallup poll on civic engagement published in January 2011, Pakistan scored higher than all its immediate neighbors in a survey measuring monetary donations, volunteer experience and the likelihood of helping strangers. Although World Bank places 33% of Pakistanis below the poverty line, 50% of the population donates money to help others. [3]
• In the 50 years since the first Pakistani won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship, over 60 Pakistanis have followed suit to achieve higher education in Oxford and Cambridge. Former recipients include Dr Ayub K. Omayya, the inventor of the Ommaya Reservoir, which is used to provide chemotherapy directly to the tumour site for brain tumours; Professor Shaukat Hameed, a nuclear-laser physicist who is a Fellow of the Pakistan Academy for Sciences and Wasim Sajjad, who has twice served as President of Pakistan. [4]
• Private education is not an urban or elite phenomenon in Pakistan; it services students from all income levels. More than 36,000 private institutions in Pakistan attend to the educational needs of 6.3 million children. The cost of studying at a private school catering to low income children could be as low as EUR 0.7 a month! [5]
• In 2011, Pakistanis gave 140billion rupees to charity, putting giving at an all-time high. These funds support the world's largest private ambulance service (run by the Edhi Foundation), charitable hospitals, orphanages, relief from natural disasters, free meals and amenities for the poor. [6]
• 60 seats in the Pakistan National Assembly are reserved for women and there is universal suffrage at age 18 [7]. Unlike some countries in the region, women in Pakistan have always had the right to vote and have been active participants in politics since independence.
• Pakistan’s National Assembly just unanimously approved the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Act 2011. The bill was authored by a female legislator and outlines measures to prevent discrimination against women. [8]
• The University of Karachi, a public institution in Pakistan’s largest city, houses a collection of over 360,000 books and 110,000 copies of national and foreign journals and periodicals. It also contains rare manuscripts from the British museum, the India Office Library and the Bodleian and Cambridge University libraries. Karachi University is renowned for research and has been serving the population since 1951. [9]

References

1 Tariq Rahman, Lesser-known languages of South Asia : status and policies, case studies and applications of information technology , (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), 73-106.
2 Cambridge Outstanding Achiever Awards Brochure, www.cie.org.uk
3 http://www.gallup.com/poll/145589/civic-engagement-highest-developed-countries.aspx#2
4 www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk
5 Andrabi, Tahir, Jishnu Das, and Asim Khwaja, The Rise of Private Schooling in Pakistan: Catering to the Urban Elite or Educating the Rural Poor? (Mimeo,Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2002)
6 Pakistan Center for Philanthropy, June 2011
7 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
8 The full text of the legislation can be read here: http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/legislation/2006/wpb.html
9 www.uok.edu.pk