RAWALPINDI: When Major Sania Safdar was posted with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) last year, she never expected that her service would lead her to becoming the first peacekeeper from the mission to receive the 2023 Certificate of Recognition for gender advocacy.

Safdar, 36, was presented the certificate in August this year by the New York-based UN Department of Peace Operations for advocating gender equality as a member of the UNFICYP. She served from July 2023 to November 2024 as the mission’s Force Signal Officer and one of its military gender focal points.

“I am the first [Pakistani] peacekeeper from that mission who received this certificate of recognition for gender advocacy, and I am very happy and proud,” Safdar told Arab News in an interview this week. 

She said her work involved promoting equal representation of women in all activities, organizing initiatives for them and ensuring their participation in planning, exercises, and operations throughout the mission. Since her deployment to the mission last year, she proactively took charge of several initiatives “by focusing on integrating the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda into military components of the Mission’s work,” the UN said. 

Getting the certificate of recognition is not the soldier’s only memorable achievement as a member of the UNFICYP. 

After she left the peacekeeping force in Cyprus, the chief of the mission wrote a letter of appreciation to Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir, recognizing Safdar’s efforts as a staff officer.

“I am really happy and really proud to have two certificates with me when I finish my UN mission,” she said. 

Safdar was also nominated for the 2023 UN Military Gender Advocate of the Year Award that “recognizes a military peacekeeper who has best integrated a gender perspective into peacekeeping activities.”

While the award went to Major Radhika Sen, an Indian peacekeeper deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Safdar said being nominated was achievement enough. 

“Because of all my performance, I was nominated for this award,” she said. 

“DREAM JOB”

Safdar hails from a small village in Pakistan’s Gujur Khan district and has a background in engineering. 

“It was not very common in our village for the ladies to go outside and to live in the hostels for higher education,” Safdar said. 

But her father, a retired teacher, encouraged her to join a post-graduate college in the city of Rawalpindi, from where she completed her Faculty of Science degree. 

“When I came to know that now there is an opportunity for ladies from the engineering department to join the army, so it was my dream job,” Safdar said. 

“Even after my BS [Bachelor of Science degree], I got the scholarship for my MS [Master of Science] education and it was a very good scholarship from abroad but I rejected that scholarship and I joined the military [in 2012].” 

But life has not always been easy for Safdar, who is married to an army officer and has two sons under the age of ten. Indeed, while she described her service in Cyprus as a “wonderful experience,” living thousands of miles away from her young family came with its own set of challenges:

“In the middle of the mission, my elder son was facing some medical problem … and I was so much worried and so much concerned that my family responsibilities were being compromised.”

At one point, the major considered quitting the mission but her husband and family motivated her to continue serving.

It has all worked out for the best, as she said her family and especially her children were proud of her. 

“When I visit their school they tell their class fellows, ‘Look, my mother is serving, my mother is in uniform,’ and sometimes they request me to, ‘Please come to our school and mama, please come in uniform’,” she said with a smile. 

“This is, I think, the most proud moment for me that my kids, my parents, and my husband, they are proud of me.”

In the future, Safdar hopes other young women will learn from her example and follow their passions with “determination and faith.”

“If you really want to do something just go for it,” she said, “take the initiative and Allah Almighty will never, ever waste your efforts.”

ISLAMABAD: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation is in Islamabad this week and will hold discussions with top Pakistani officials on the “key benchmarks” of a $7 billion loan program approved in September, a finance ministry official said on Tuesday.

The IMF delegation led by Pakistan mission chief Nathan Porter arrived in Islamabad on Monday on an unplanned visit. The team is expected to hold meetings until Friday with top officials from ministries such as finance and energy and the Federal Board of Revenue, the main tax collection agency, to collect data on “loan program performance to date,” a finance ministry official told Arab News, seeking anonymity. 

The IMF has said Porter’s visit is not part of the first review of the loan program, which is not scheduled to take place before the first quarter of 2025. 

“Some key benchmarks of the loan program will come under discussion during the meetings, as Islamabad faces some revenue shortfall and a recent botched attempt to privatize the Pakistan International Airlines,” the finance ministry official said. 

“Matters like external financing gap and reforms in the energy sector are also expected to be discussed with the IMF delegation.”

The IMF reached a staff-level agreement with Pakistan in July for a 37-month $7 billion bailout package, which the Fund’s Executive Board approved in September. This was the 25th loan program that Pakistan has obtained since 1958.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the ministry of finance said a delegation led by Porter had an “initial meeting” with finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb.

Minister of State for Finance Ali Pervez Malik, Governor State Bank Jameel Ahmed, Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Rashid Mahmood Langrial and senior finance ministry officials were also present in the meeting, the ministry said.

Islamabad secured the bailout loan, critical to keeping its $350 billion fragile economy afloat, after taking painful measures such as hiking fuel and food prices and implementing reforms to broaden the country’s tax base and privatize state-owned entities.

“INTERIM CHECKS”

Pakistan’s macroeconomic conditions and investor sentiment have improved in recent months, which analysts say has led to a bullish trend in the country’s stock market.

Syed Atif Zafar, the chief economist at Topline Securities, said the IMF delegation’s meetings with Pakistani officials were part of “interim checks” to ensure a successful review of the loan facility next year. 

“The government failed to achieve the tax revenue target in the first quarter that has perhaps necessitated this IMF visit, but still the authorities have multiple options and time to overcome this gap,” he told Arab News. 

“The good thing at this point is that all structural and quantitative benchmarks of the loan program are on track.”

Tahir Abbas, a senior economist and head of research at Arif Habib Limited, said Pakistan last month requested the IMF for a $1 billion climate financing facility to mitigate climate risk, which would be discussed during the ongoing IMF visit.

“Pakistan’s revenue shortfall of around Rs200 billion ($720 million) in the first quarter has mainly necessitated this IMF visit,” he told Arab News. 

“The finance ministry will now inform the IMF delegation about the possible revenue measures to overcome the shortfall and cut the expenditures.”