Sherry Rehman - Profile

Ms. Sherry Reham (Sherbano Rehman) was the Minister for Information and Broadcasting government of Pakistan, She resigned from the post as minister after she was first insulted by GEO TV Kamran Khan in a show and later when the GEO TV was supsedly shut down in few unknown parts of Pakistan.

He resignation came during the Lawers and Nawaz Sharief’s long March She had a very hard time from the uncontrolled Media of Pakistan which had questioned her in very rude and idiotic way.

. Ms. Reham is senior Pakistani, journalist, politician, and the member of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, After the Elections of 2008 she was appointed as the Minister for Boadcasting and Information comminly known as “Informationa Minister”.

Sherry was Rehman born in Karachi on December 21st, 1960 her father late Hassanally A. Rahman worked for many years in public education and law, and her mother was the first woman vice president of the State Bank of Pakistan. She say in an Interview “I was exposed early on to the idea of women working and public life,”.

Ms. Rehman was the first Pakistani to be recognized with an award for independent journalism by the UK House of Lords in its Muslim World Awards Ceremony in the year 2002.
She also won the R.L Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award, for her book “The Kashmiri Shawl ”

She has studied art history and politics at Smith College and the University of Sussex

Sherry Rehman has been a senior journalist for twenty years. She served as Editor of Pakistan’s prestigious newsmagazine, Herald, for ten years.

She has wide experience in both print and broadcast media. Her bold and creative journalistic style earned her the reputation one of the top journalists of the country. She also anchored a television show on current affairs in 1999. Sherry Rehman regularly writes for national and international newspapers and newsmagazine.

In past She has been a Member of Parliament in the National Assembly (2002-2007) and Central Information Secretary as well as President of Policy Planning for he party Pakistan Peoples Party.

She takes great interest in the maters of foreign and security policy, women’s status and rights legislation, and media policies in the National Assembly.

In the National Assembly, Rehman has served as Convener of the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Media and Public Diplomacy for Kashmir and member of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir, and Foreign Relations Committee in PPP.

During her last five years in the parliament, Sherry Rehman moved a number of bills related to media freedom, women’s empowerment and human rights.

She is the architect of all five of the PPP bills tabled in the National Assembly, including Women Empowerment Bill, Anti-Honor Killings Bill, Domestic Violence Prevention Bill, Affirmative Action Bill and Hudood Repeal Bill.

She moved two Bills for the Media: one, the Freedom of Information Bill and the other, the Press Act, which prevents working journalists from being arrested under the 1999 Press Ordinance.

She served as a member of the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) from 1988-1998. She also headed the team that prepared the PPP Manifesto for the 2008 elections.

Sherry Rehman has had the privilege of representing Pakistan at the UN General Assembly session in 1994. She has also lectured at the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University in November 2004.

In civil society, Sherry Rehman has been an active proponent for the provision of better access to health and educational resources, particularly for women and children from the lower-income sections of Pakistani society. In this respect, she is the Chairperson of the Lady Dufferin Foundation Trust, the largest non-profit provider of women and children’s subsidized health care in the province of Sindh.

Sherry Rehman is married to renowned banker Nadeem Hussain. Mr Hussain is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Tameer Microfinance Bank. He was with Citibank since 1979 and worked at citibank for 27 years at different positions in many countries.

Sherry Rehman’s latest book “The Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamawar to Paisley”, that she co-authored with Ms Naheed Jafri, was published in 2006. The book has been selected for R.L Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award for 2006, in the US. Ms Rehman will receive her award at the 11th Beinnial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, in Hawai, in September 2008.

Sherry Rehman is outspoken and very aggressive in her writings in one of her Article in 2007 she wrote:-

“The inter-services intelligence agencies remain above the law and unaccountable, even though they reportedly absorb seven to 11 per cent of the military’s budget and use secret funds and ghost bank accounts to destabilize civilian political parties and their governments. The Mehran Bank scandal is an example of such financial corruption, when bribes worth Rs 14 million were unearthed as paid out by the ISI to manipulate the 1990 elections, a fact which was admitted in court by General Aslam Beg, the former COAS. ”

IRI award for Sherry Rehman

International Republican Institute (IRI), renowned for conducting various political surveys in Pakistan, has awarded Sherry Rehman the title of ‘democracy’s hero’ for her struggle for democracy in the country.

According to IRI, Sherry worked diligently to initiate democratic reforms and was the architect of several bills in support of press freedom and women’s empowerment.

She worked closely with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to campaign for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, and braved tear-gassing and confinement by security agencies on several occasions.