In Pakistan, the most essential workers are among the least protected by the legal system[1]. They work in conditions that are often dangerous, sometimes fatal, and almost always precarious. These workers include people who clean the country’s gutters, women who harvest crops and mothers who perform domestic care work to raise their families. Their labour is essential but their rights are routinely ignored. Sara Malkani has spent her legal career trying to change that.
Sara is a Karachi-based advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan with a practice spanning constitutional litigation, criminal law, family law, and labour rights[2]. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School and a BA with high honours from Princeton University, where her thesis was awarded the Class of 1869 Prize in Ethics. Before returning to Pakistan, she practiced labour and employment law in Los Angeles, representing teacher and port worker unions. Since then, she has built one of Pakistan’s most active pro bono practices, taking on cases that are arduous and prolonged, by standing up for communities that are often forgotten by our legal system.
Two of Sara’s current cases illustrate the kind of work her office does.
The first is a Constitutional Public Interest Litigation filed in the High Court of Sindh, challenging the practice of manual gutter and sewage cleaning[3]. Sanitation workers in Pakistan, the majority of them Christian or from other religious minority communities, are routinely sent into raw sewage drains without any safety protocols[4]. They die from toxic gas exposure at an alarming rate but the government has failed to put any protection plan in place. In September 2025, three workers died in Usmanabad, Karachi: George Masih, aged around 45, and two teenagers, Vishaal and Sahil, 15 and 17 years old. They had been instructed to enter the gutters and sewage by a Union Council Chairman while personnel from the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation stood by. No criminal case was filed. Their families were offered Rs. 700,000 in exchange for a written undertaking not to pursue accountability[5].
The petition asks the Sindh High Court to declare manual gutter and sewage cleaning a violation of constitutional rights, specifically the rights to life, dignity, and equality under Articles 9, 14, and 25 of the Constitution of Pakistan, and to direct the government to prohibit the practice except in rare circumstances where mechanical means are genuinely insufficient, with comprehensive, mandatory safety protocols[6]. Mechanical technology that eliminates the need for manual sewer entry has existed for decades. The World Bank and the World Health Organisation have both recommended its use[7]. The petition argues there is no justification, legal or otherwise, for continuing to send people into sewers with their bare hands.
The Law Office of Sara Malkani also recently litigated a case on behalf of women agricultural workers in Sindh. Almost 70% of Pakistan’s female workforce is employed in agriculture, yet women agricultural workers have almost no formal protections[8]. In 2019, the Sindh government passed the Sindh Women Agricultural Workers Act, a law that, on paper, guarantees minimum wages, working hour limits, maternity leave, and the right to organise[9]. For almost five years, the law was not implemented. Sara’s petition, filed alongside the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and women agricultural workers’ unions, asked the court to direct the government to actually enforce the law it passed[10]. In response to directions from the High Court in the petition, the Government of Sindh notified rules under the law in April 2026. This is a crucial step towards implementation and will hopefully lead to the recognition of women agricultural workers and their entitlement to social protection and other benefits from the state.
Why this Partnership?
iProbono’s work is built around a simple premise: that access to justice should not depend on whether you can afford legal services or not. Sara’s practice fits squarely within that mandate, and the gap this partnership is designed to close is a practical one. Pro bono work of this scale requires sustained commitment and resources that are hard to maintain without support.
Under the partnership, iProbono will provide funding over twelve months to support her work, covering human resource costs, alongside litigation costs for cases involving criminal defendants, gender-based violence survivors, and other clients who would otherwise go without representation.
The immediate goal is simple: ensure more cases get to court, and the lawyers working on them have the support to see them through. The two petitions pending before the Sindh High Court have implications well beyond Karachi. A ruling that prohibits manual gutter and sewage cleaning would set a precedent for the whole country. A court order forcing the implementation of the Women Agricultural Workers Act would give tens of thousands of women enforceable rights they technically already have.
We can’t predict court outcomes. What we know is that these cases deserve to be argued well, and the communities they represent deserve lawyers who have the capacity and resources to see them through. This partnership is one more step towards making that possible.
