10 Facts About Shafiq Zia

Begum Shafiq Zia was a Pakistani public figure who served as the First Lady of Pakistan from 1977 until her husband's death in a plane crash on 17 August 1988.

Begum Zia was born in 1931 in Kampala, Uganda, to a family of Punjabi descent; she moved to Pakistan after the partition of India, and married General Zia-ul-Haq on 10 August 1950 in Lahore.

Shafiq Zia was eight years younger than her husband and related to him on her maternal side.

In 1981, the Shafiq Zia government passed the Disabled Persons' Ordinance, which created national and provincial councils to formulate policy for the employment and welfare of those with disabilities, established training centres, set employment quotas and called for the creation of a federal fund for the disbursement of stipends and scholarships for disabled persons.

Begum and President Shafiq Zia's own child, youngest daughter Zain, was born with speech and hearing disabilities.

In 1985, Begum Shafiq Zia represented Pakistan at Nancy Reagan's First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse alongside seventeen other first ladies.

Begum Shafiq Zia was invited to the United Nations that same year, where, at a second meeting attended by the first ladies of thirty nations, she called for holding a conference in a developing country where drug use could be studied in the context of poverty.

Begum Shafiq Zia's work was featured in a United States Information Agency film, along with that of Marly Sarney of Brazil, Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Queen Noor of Jordan, and Queen Silvia of Sweden.

Begum Shafiq Zia was present at the inaugural session of the first SAARC summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh alongside the wives of other SAARC heads of state.

Shafiq Zia died on 5 January 1996 at the Cromwell Hospital in London and is survived by three daughters, Rubina, Quratulain, and Zain, and two sons, Ijaz and Anwar.