Dr Masuma Hasan is Chairman of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs. she is a scholar, diplomat, and civil servant, President of the Board Governors of Aurat Foundation, Senate and Syndicate member and member of the Selection Board of the University of Karachi. In her public service career, she was Cabinet Secretary to the Government of Pakistan which is the highest post in the civil service, moreover, she held position of Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Vienna, International Atomic Energy Agency, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and in all other international agencies in Vienna where she chaired the Group of 77. Additionally, she was Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia and Slovakia. Furthermore, she was the director of the National Institute of Public Administration Karachi and Director General of the Management Services Division in Islamabad and Karachi. Moreover, Dr Hasan has a Ph.D. degree in Politics from the University of Cambridge UK. She is the editor of Pakistan in a Changing World and Editor-in Chief of the quarterly Pakistan Horizon. She has been a member of commissions on public sector reforms, served on the boards of many universities and has written articles on public administration and international politics. She has received many awards and was recently named Goodwill Ambassador of the World NGO Day Initiative. She has also written a book titled as Pakistan in an age of Turbulence.
Fatehyab Ali Khan was an advocate, constitutional expert, and writer, political visionary and national leader. His entire career was a struggle for the rights of the oppressed class of Pakistan. He struggled for the promotion of democracy; furthermore, he worked for ensuring freedom of expression, justice and the rule of law. He fought for these ideals both at the national political level by political activism and through the courts of law. Moreover, he was Chairman of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs from 1995-2009.
Fatehyab Ali Khan’s family hailed from Hyderabad Deccan and shifted to Pakistan after Partition. His first clash with dictatorship happened under Ayub Khan’s regime, when he led the country-wide movement of the youth to defy martial law. Fatehyab was then only 25 years old when he was arrested, tortured, tried by a military court as accused number one, convicted to hard labor and externed from Karachi several times.
Additionally, on being denied passport by the government to study abroad, he started his legal practice in Karachi in 1964 and worked for the supremacy of the rule of law from the platforms of Karachi Bar, Sindh High Court Bar and West Pakistan Bar Council. Later, he became President of the Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party, working with democratic forces against unilateral amendments in the 1973 Constitution and for holding fresh elections in Pakistan in 1977.
A founding member of the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD), he was a signatory of the MRD Declaration. He courted arrest from Empress Market in Karachi on 18 August 1983. He was convicted for one year in 1983, being the only head of a political party to be tried and convicted by a military court. He was one of the first victims of Zia ul Haq’s repression; he was imprisoned several times in the decade of the 1980s which a period of great distress for him but that also helped to bring Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party into mainstream politics.
He was the author of numerous published articles on political and constitutional issues. He wrote extensively on the constitutional anomalies resulting from the distortion of the 1973 Constitution and on issues in international politics, legal and representative systems, and Kashmir, Kalabagh and water treaties. He was also the prime mover in saving the Institute, a non-official organization which had been illegally taken over by Zia ul Haq in 1980, resultantly, in getting it returned to its independent status through the judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in November 1993. He passed away on 26 September 2010.
Arif Hasan is an architect, planner, activist, social researcher and writer. He received his early education in Karachi and studied architecture at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University), UK from 1960 to 1965.
He worked in architects’ offices in the UK, France, and Spain for three years, and returned to Karachi in 1968 to establish his independent practice which evolved into dealing with national and international urban planning and development. He is currently documenting Karachi’s history related issues and the process of social change in Pakistan. He is the Chairman of Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute and Urban Resource Centre in Karachi. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University, Karachi.
Arif Hasan’s important architectural work in Karachi includes Hasan Square, SOS Children’s Village and Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research Complex. He has been honoured with many awards which include Best Building Award, Karachi Development Authority (KDA) in 1983, and International Year for the Shelter less Memorial Award in Japan in 1990. He also received Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2001 and Life Time Achievement Award from Institute of Architects Pakistan in 2003.
As a member of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs since 1976, he has been continuously involved in the strenuous efforts to save the institute from outside interference and filed a Constitutional Petition (C.P.No.670 of 1980) with Rasheed Razvi and Mazhar-ul-Jamil against the takeover of the Pakistan institute of International Affairs by General Ziaul Haq in 1980. The Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the independence of the Institute in November 1993 and declared the takeover of the Institute as ultra vires of the 1973 Constitution.
He has conceived and designed the expansion and physical works of the Institute and supervises their implementation on an honorary basis. He is the author of many books including Participatory Development, Understanding Karachi: Planning and reform for the future and The Unplanned Revolution.