Intrusive State Powers of CDA Islamabad and Human Rights Violations

By Zeeba T. Hashmi

This scribe visited Rimsha Colony in H-9 on 19^th  March, 2026 to know what was happening on ground amid news reports of their imminent evictions. Another reason was to understand what happens to children when their communities are uprooted. This community remains of particular concern for Ibtidah for Education, because here is a story of a people who were settled and then displaced to be resettled again.  And now, facing uncertainty, thanks to the “state powers of eminent domain” exercised by Capital Development Authority, who had only given them a three day ultimatum to vacate their premises.

Three days!

These residents had been living here from as long back as 2008. They have built their houses and carry NADRA identity cards issued to the very address where they’ve been residing for almost two decades. Those marked for evictions are earning their bread from odd works and menial labour. They work in irregular domestic work industry and lack necessary social protections. There are no proper water, electricity and sanitation facilities, yet the only comfort they have is the affordability of having a roof over their heads.  Local elections have been held here. The residents have also participated in democratic exercise of casting their votes during general elections. Yet, their pleas are not heard. Future, to them, looks bleak.

Approximately, there are eight church-based and private schools that have been established here and running for some years. There are children here who eagerly attend their schools, also earmarked for demolition.

“We have a public school that is available just a kilometer away from here, some of our children go there, but most prefer to drop out from there because of the sheer discrimination they face owing to our religion.”  Maryam*, a local school teacher confided when narrating fearful tales of education deprivation faced by so many.

Discrimination is another form  children here face,  as she spoke of them  getting denied admissions at a nearby public school that is not more than kilometer meter away. “Parents have more confidence in private or church-based schools here than they have in government schools” she added.

Anxious residents were gathering at a nearby church on a rainy Sunday. They prayed for justice and mercy. They live in hope every day, amid their daily struggle to bring food on the table for dinner.

What is particular about Rimsha is that some residents have a history of facing repeated evictions and displacements due to multiple social, human rights and legal reasons. This locality has been named after Rimsha Masih, a minor girl with down syndrome who faced false blasphemy accusation, but was later acquitted. Even though her name has been cleared, her community continued to face threats, so much so, the state decided to relocate them here for their safety back in 2008. But today, they are a victim of double persecution; one by way of the intimidations they earlier faced from extremist clerics and now from state functionaries forcing them to evict without making alternate arrangements for them. They feel helpless with nowhere to go for refuge. They fear an uncertain, unsettled future.

This is not just about Christians living in the slums. This is about all residents living there who are being denied a permanent residence and dignity they deserve.

Eviction Impact: Education Loss for All 

Another impact that goes ignored is the loss of education. The Alliance for Urban Rights, an organisation working tirelessly for the housing rights and protection of Katchi Abadi residents, has recently carried out an important education survey on school and health access across informal settlements in Islamabad. Data collected from 49 locations reveals that children aged 5–14 are attending around 182 primary and middle schools — all are now at risk of losing school access due to these evictions. Of these 49 settlements, 28 (57%) report almost all boys attending school, while 27 (55%) settlements report of almost all girls  going to schools — a finding that underscores how deeply embedded schooling has become even within these marginalised communities. Trends also show more acceptance for private schools (56.3%) among residents than they have for public schools (43.7%), which reflects preferences they have for their children, either in terms of quality or in terms of sense of safety they feel. However, private schools have also being marked, impacting not just education, but also for the workforce engaged in school.   With Pakistan already facing a national education emergency marked by very high dropout rates, forced evictions by state authorities here take no account of the loss of school education that will be an inevitable consequence. Adding to this is the trauma of not just losing an access to school, but of also losing a home. This is a denial of right to education is a serious violation of a fundamental constitutional right. Such actions will further deepen the crisis by pushing thousands more out of classrooms those who are already at a great disadvantage and deprived of basic state services, including affordable housing and dignified living.

What became of the Displaced — Compensation & Aftermath

Over 25,000 houses have been evicted from Bari Imam, Muslim Colony and Noorpur Shahan, however, the CDA has only compensated  approximately 750 families and claimed they had been provided alternative plots in 2001 and were paid compensations in 2003, whereas all other constructions are illegal, therefore, deemed CDA having no liability towards them. Some affectees have contest this claiming the houses have been existing from over 30–40 years ago.  The demolitions have continued even after the Islamabad High Court issued a stay order in December 2025 and despite the Supreme Court’s 2015 stay order still technically being in effect.

What happened at Saidpur Village, despite the rights of the indigenous residents being violated is a tale of lingering torture and deceit by the state authorities. Muslim Colony, which got evicted and razed, was once considered a “Model Village” by the authorities, only for the residents to come for a rude awakening that that state-declared “model village” too is being bulldozed.

What the Law says on Evictions

There is a serious dilemma that needs to be addressed not just from a moralistic standpoint, but on the ground of who has a sound legal justification for evictions that carry such serious consequences of human lives. The laws cannot be read without taking into consideration human lives in distress.

International laws and global consensus have called this a human rights concern. The OHCHR Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-Based Evictions and Displacements define the issue plainly:

“Forced evictions are considered gross violations of human rights, particularly the right to adequate housing. They involve the permanent or temporary removal of people from their homes or land, often carried out by state authorities or private entities without legal protection or due process. This practice can lead to homelessness, destitution, and a lack of access to basic services such as food, water, and healthcare.”

According to all international instruments, the obligation is on the states to refrain from, and actively protect against, forced evictions. Pakistan is a signatory to these binding laws and fall under articles  UDHR, UN-IECSR, UN-CRC, and CEDAW, and CERD.

Pakistan is in violation not just of international binding laws, but also of its own domestic laws.

Several domestic laws govern eviction, and all require mandatory compensation, relocation, or prior resettlement arrangements. These include the Land Acquisition Act 1894 — a colonial-era law still unreformed — and the Katchi Abadis Act 1987, which provides for cash assistance or plot allocation. Provincial acts across Pakistan further protect settlements with over 30 years of existence and documentary proof. The National Housing Policy (2001) and the National Resettlement Policy (2002) both place human vulnerability at the centre of all considerations — at least on paper. In Islamabad specifically, the CDA Ordinance of 1960 mandates regularisation of informal settlements, and the ICT Urban Katchi Abadi Regulations 2025 are the most recent framework introduced.

Some Verdicts pointing towards CDA Irregularities and Abuses

Significant court verdicts, however, raise concerns over inadequate compensation and sounding alarms over irregularities within the authority pointing to abuse of power and organised corruption.

Zeeshan Ahmed, a land rights activist and researcher of the civil society mapping report “Permanent Impermanence,” raised concern that no official surveys on Islamabad’s informal settlements have been conducted. He argues this may be deliberate — a way to keep settlements undocumented, and therefore invisible, unacknowledged, and legally non-existent. The last official CDA survey, he notes, was conducted in 1990, documenting only 10 informal settlements. Since then, 39 more have sprung up, with a combined population estimated between 343,000 and 554,000. With roughly a fifth of Islamabad’s population living in these settlements, the question demands an answer: where do these people go if the state fails to provide compensation or relocation?

Resettlement land that rightfully belongs to displaced residents has, in numerous cases, been illegally allotted to others.

In a landmark Islamabad High Court verdict on inherited lands acquired by CDA, Justice Minallah decried the “abuse of the power of eminent domain” and pointed to CDA’s unlawful allotments to its own employees, depriving thousands of rightful affectees of their entitlements. The court observed:

“Most of the victims are not even aware of their rights and thus they are vulnerable to be exploited because of an apparent collusion between the unscrupulous investors and the public functionaries. It was observed during the proceedings and has become obvious from the material brought on the record that the victims of the abuse of the power of eminent domain have not been treated justly, fairly and as equal citizens of Pakistan. The way they have been treated by the public functionaries shows that as though to their extent the fundamental right which guarantees inviolability of dignity of a human does not exist in the Constitution.”

The irregularities of CDA have also been highlighted in Greenbelt Plot Case, 2024 whereby CDA officials in 2021 carved out new plots on greenbelts adjacent to a nullah in G-11, by establishing the “Regulation of Amendment in Layout Plan 2019” — despite the sector’s layout plan having been finalised in the 1990s. The residents challenged the new regulation, which was, luckily, considered unconstitutional by the worthy Justice Sardar Ijaz Ishaq Khan. This particular “regulation” was struck off.

De-humanizing an entire community is always the first step of a state machinery before it takes its most grotesque measures against them. The legal grounds the state invokes for evictions are all covered under the law. They may even be argued to be justifiable grounds. But they are cruel because they hold no value for the poor. In stark comparison, the rich living in illegal settlements have the power and influence to “legalize” their dwellings when their own stakes are involved. The influential residents of the post Constitution-1 Tower got their respite by having its demolition halted. For the Christian communities settled in these katchi abadis, the halt in demolitions had not come because the plight of the affected people was heard — it was more so because the issue became an international media concern, which raised serious questions over the state’s handling of religious minorities who are already persecuted. This indeed becomes a test for state functionaries to prove how authentic, unbiased, and fair they have been in their dealings with disadvantaged people. There is a need for reforms in policies and practices to ensure that state functionaries provide proper alternate arrangements for evicted families while maintaining a consistent and clean conduct among officials. Human rights and fair treatment cannot be ensured unless accountability measures are embedded within systems that can detect and prevent the kind of catastrophe we are witnessing in Islamabad today.

Zeeba T. Hashmi is an opinion writer and a researcher exploring themes of education that interconnect with issues of indoctrination, hate speech, knowledge barriers and politics on education. She runs her think tank, Ibtidah for Education.