In Pakistan, 80–86% of women never receive their rightful share of inheritance, even as their right to do so is clear and definite under Pakistani law. A daughter can inherit her father's wealth and possessions under Pakistan’s inheritance framework, which is based on Islamic personal law and has been codified in statutes since the 1960s. A widow with children is entitled to one-eighth of her deceased husband's wealth. Family arrangement or regional custom cannot legally supersede these rights.
Moreover, in 1996, Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and pledged to uphold women’s property rights as part of this agreement. However, surveys conducted by the Awaz Foundation and AGHS Legal Aid Cell consistently demonstrate that the issue of denied inheritance persists. As courts have now confirmed, the problem is not the law. It is everything that happens outside the law.
Imperfect efforts to address a tenacious problem
Women face constant pressure from their families to give up their share of inheritance to maintain peace in the home. Signatures relinquishing claims are collected under duress and documents are falsified. This, in part, led the World Bank's Women, Business and the Law project to give the country a score of 42.5 out of 100 (significantly lower than the global average of 64.2) for women's economic rights. Deficiencies in enforcement and access primarily drive that score.
In 2020, the Supreme Court of Pakistan rejected an appeal filed by a man who had spent 45 years trying to keep his sisters and the children of one sister who had passed away from receiving their portions of their father’s estate. The Court stated that depriving female relatives of inheritance was against both Islamic law and obligation, and it denounced the fraudulent pleadings and counterfeit documents used to refute the women's claims.
In a judgment on another case, a separate Supreme Court panel bluntly acknowledged that male heirs continue to deny women inheritance using legally suspect tactics. But access to the courts is not universal, and not all women in similar situations can seek legal redress. In Pakistan, civil litigation is costly and time-consuming.
Pakistan has tried to remedy the expense and long timeline of civil litigation by reforming enforcement of inheritance policies. Two of its four provinces, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, established an Ombudsperson with the authority to hear and address property complaints from women within 60 days. The federal government later enacted its own version of the law. The system seemed to provide women with a low-barrier, expedited path to reclaim property wrongfully denied to them, exactly what was lacking.
However, these processes were later overturned. The Islamabad High Court ruled the federal Enforcement of Women’s Property Rights Act 2020 illegal in 2023. The court held that the judiciary alone has the authority to issue and enforce legally binding property decisions. When evaluating the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa law, the Peshawar High Court came to the same judgment and urged the provincial government to create a constitutionally compliant substitute. Women with active complaints were sent back to languish in the civil courts.
Toward a durable solution
The overturning of these previous attempts at reform could serve as a general lesson for future efforts. Enforcement mechanisms that operate outside the judicial system, which may be very useful in practice, are subject to constitutional challenge. If they are overturned, women might be left in a worse situation, with their claims disrupted and time lost. Ultimately, the necessary long-term solution is to change the basic institutions that determine and record property rights.
Evidence from other countries supports this conclusion. India’s legislature amended the country’s Hindu Succession Act in 2005 to grant daughters equal inheritance rights from birth. In 2020, the Indian Supreme Court used the legal system to close a potential loophole, ruling against families’ claims that the amendment did not apply retroactively. Rwanda combined a land registration campaign that directly registered women's names on title papers with its 1999 succession law. According to research conducted in eastern Rwanda, this improved women’s documented land ownership by 28% and gave them more influence over land use. In these cases, reforms had the constitutional durability that Pakistan's own processes lack because they proceeded through courts and administrative registries rather than working around them.
This suggests several specific actions Pakistan can take. Civil courts require dedicated resources to hear inheritance disputes without the delays that prevent most women from accessing litigation. All four of Pakistan’s provinces should uniformly implement the current legislative requirement that revenue officers document the transfer of property for all heirs, including women, following a death; this would eliminate the need for additional court orders. Funded legal aid must extend to rural women, who face the greatest deprivation but the least access to legal support in part because most legal aid organizations currently operate primarily in urban centers. Finally, any national reform framework must explicitly include Sindh and Balochistan, which rank behind Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on all current protections.
Inheritance reform is a civic and institutional problem
Scholars associated with the global movement Musawah confirm that Islamic doctrine supports women’s complete inheritance rights. The barrier to securing these rights is institutional rather than religious.
According to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, it is against divine law to deny a woman her inheritance. The most urgent need is to build institutions that can withstand constitutional scrutiny and make that order enforceable in practice.