Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Michelle Hussein.

My guest today is a lawyer in Pakistan whose passion for human rights began early in her legal studies.

Iman Mazari Hazir is still only 31 and has become well known in her home country for defending people's rights against the state,

for working on cases of abduction and

disappearance, and for speaking out against Pakistan's powerful army. She has herself faced

arrest and now terror charges. Does she see herself as activist as well as lawyer? And how can

her work have an impact in a country where the path of democracy

and the rule of law has long been challenged.

Iman Mazari Hazir in Islamabad, welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you for having me.

Now, you have become well known in your own country as a human rights lawyer, including taking

on key institutions of the state.

I wonder first what it was in your early life that led you to that work.

I think when you grow up in Pakistan, you see a lot of power imbalances.

You see the constant development of democracy.

You see injustices being perpetrated by the state and its agencies

against the most vulnerable, whether that's the Baloch ethnic community or that's the Pashtun ethnic

community or Sindhys. So you grow up in that environment and I feel that you're very

motivated to fight against that injustice because you see it on such a massive scale.

How would you describe the state of human rights in the country today?

I would say that the state of human rights is deplorable.

We don't have a democracy in Pakistan.

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