A lawyer and civil society activist and active in the movement for peace, human rights and women's rights in Pakistan for the last three decades, she specialises in human rights litigation, and is especially concerned with the human rights of women, children, minorities, bonded and child labour, political and other prisoners. She has conducted several cases which have become landmarks in setting human rights standards in Pakistan. Her battle for the rights of children, especially the protection of child labourers engaged in hazardous work, led to the promulgation an act regulating the employment of children in 1991.