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| April 28, 2006 | Friday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 29, 1427 |
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Primitive practices
Strange inconsistencies
Pakistan must qualify for HRC membership
THE report that Pakistan is a candidate for election to the new UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has aroused considerable interest among human rights activists in the country. They will surely wish that Pakistan plays a progressive role in promoting human rights the world over. However, Pakistan may have to do much to ensure that members of the General Assembly can vote for it without feeling embarrassed about it.
WHILE performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the Diamer-Bhasha dam on Wednesday, President Pervez Musharraf very categorically said that all the dams identified under the government’s ‘2016 Water Vision’ policy, including Kalabagh, will be built. With the focus primarily on the Diamer-Bhasha project at present, it is reassuring that the president took note of the concerns of the inhabitants of the area who will be affected by the construction of the dam. He also dwelt at length with Pakistan’s water and energy crises that are expected to intensify in the coming years. It is significant that while emphasising the need for new mega dams, the president promised to remove the apprehensions of the NWFP and Sindh vis-‘-vis the Kalabagh dam. This is a correct approach. So far the concerns that have determined the attitudes of these two provinces towards Kalabagh have not been sympathetically considered. Hence the politicisation of this project.
Sindh has three main concerns. First, there is the fear that there is not enough water in the Indus for these mega projects to be used optimally. Secondly, Sindh’s water supply, which is already running at a low level, will be reduced further since the regulation of the flow of the river might enable the upper riparian to take away more of the water and thus starve the lower riparian of irrigation water for its agriculture. Thirdly, Sindh worries about possible environmental problems. Its coastal areas, which have suffered as a result of sea water moving upward to Kotri, need a minimum of 3.6 million acre feet of water escapages per annum in the Indus to offset the negative ecological impact on the river delta. For the NWFP, the issue of displacement of the local people — 42,172 in all — in the area where the dam will be built is something that has to be considered. There is also the fear of fertile cultivable land near Nowshera being submerged. Lurking in people’s minds is the worry about the fate of the displaced people since Tarbela dam’s experience has not been very happy.
If the government does not want a more intense controversy over Kalabagh in its lap, it is important for it to take up these issues and give convincing and authentic answers to the problems and concerns being expressed about the consequences of the Kalabagh project. Before it proceeds further, it would do well to hold meetings with various stakeholders, consider their points of view and present the findings of its own studies and surveys. The major problem is the lack of trust and credibility that has placed the government at a disadvantage. The failure of the technical committee on water resources to present unanimous and unambiguous recommendations has also given rise to the impression of lack of transparency. The World Bank, which had proposed and designed the Kalabagh dam in the eighties, has now issued reports that give the impression that Pakistan’s water resources are more or less exhausted. Given the confusion caused by the contradictory reports and the government’s own record of making announcements that are not honoured, can one really blame the people for being skeptical? Take the case of the Diamer-Bhasha dam. The president had promised in his television address in January that work would begin in February. But it is only now that the launching has taken place. Perhaps the government’s words would carry more weight if it tried to be more consistent and amenable to people’s views and opinions.
IT IS shocking how obscurantist tribal customs continue to flourish in our society despite the fact that modern concepts of human rights have transformed social norms in large parts of the world. It is more shocking that these customs have the backing of the legal and police set-up that makes it so difficult to eliminate them. One example is that of vani and swara which recognise the handing over of a young girl as compensation to the family of a victim who has been hurt by a male relative of the girl. The jirga or the panchayat, another element of tribal societies, operate freely in many regions of Pakistan and hand down judgments many of which are in conflict with the law of the land. The latest case to come to notice is that of a three-year-old girl being married to a 14-year-old boy on the orders of a panchayat because her father had allegedly raped the boy’s sister. It is good that the Supreme Court under the stewardship of a sensitive chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has started addressing these hideous problems. The chief justice has ordered the Punjab police chief to take action against the members of the panchayat in question and to provide protection to the raped woman. Also to be commended is the anthropologist Samar Minallah, who has been working diligently to unearth numerous cases of vani and bring them before the court.
Given the high incidence of vani cases in Punjab and the NWFP, it is encouraging that the chief justice has set up committees comprising presidents and secretaries of bar associations in all districts to receive complaints from victims of this antediluvian custom. It is a positive development that there has been a significant response to this move. The police and lower judiciary have also been directed to cooperate with the committees. It is important, however, that efforts should be made to create social awareness of the undesirable aspects of such customs. The Aurat Foundation with which the anthropologist works has been doing a good job in this respect. But there is need for more social activists to get involved in this campaign to raise public consciousness about the evil of swara and vani.
THE federal government’s ‘tolerance’ of the local Taliban in Waziristan agency in FATA could have several adverse consequences. The most obvious, and something which has been reported many times in recent days, is the tendency among these ultra-conservative obscurantist elements is to take to violence and to be inimical to those who do not subscribe to their interpretation of religion. Take the reported burning of regional and national newspapers on Monday by four masked militants who, after setting the papers on fire, warned the driver of the van carrying them that further action will be taken unless the newspapers call them ‘mujahideen’ or ‘Taliban’. One wonders what the government’s reasons are for kowtowing to these elements. In recent weeks, television sets have been destroyed, shops selling music and CDs have been forcibly closed, men have been ordered to grow beards, barbers have been asked not to shave a grown man’s beard and even owners of public transport have been warned not to offer their services to clean-shaven men.
Things have not stopped here. The local Taliban have also gone about killing their opponents, often brutally by beheading them. In a particularly gruesome act some weeks ago, they chopped off the heads of their opponents and then left their bodies hanging from the main bazaar in Miramshah, as a warning to those wishing to challenge their power. The government may well have certain ‘tactical’ reasons for mollifying these elements. However, it seems to ignore the fact that there is no guarantee that these local Taliban will not join forces with the foreign militants hiding in FATA. For not acting against these local Taliban and ejecting them from their power base in Waziristan, the government will be seen as a passive supporter of all the abominations these elements are indulging in.
The UN General Assembly is due to elect 47 members of the HRC, created last month to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR), on May 9, 2006 and the council is scheduled to begin working a few weeks later. This election is important because the first members of the council will be required to establish traditions that will help the new body achieve its objectives. Unlike the Commission on Human Rights, which met only once a year, the council will function throughout the year, and its annual session will be much longer than that of the commission.
The council’s mandate to intervene in human rights situations more promptly and with greater effectiveness will require much greater display of diligence and responsibility by its members than was expected of their predecessors on the commission. In other words, candidates for membership of the council should view their undertaking as an unusual challenge.
Pakistan is seeking one of the 13 seats allotted to the 54 Asian countries. One of the reasons advanced to replace the commission with the council was that quite a few countries with appalling human rights record got elected to the former. It is fair to seek guarantees that Pakistan will not contribute to a situation in which the new human rights watchdog could invite similar criticism. Pakistan must make sure that its candidature is based on merit and that it is backed by a reasonably adequate record of respect for human rights at home.
Unfortunately the Pakistan state has never cared to earn credit for its respect for its citizens’ human rights or for international human rights norms and instruments.
Frequent, extended and serious denial of the people’s right to representative, responsible and transparent governance implies an inauspicious introduction to Pakistan’s human rights record. This unwelcome impression is strengthened by a hefty erosion of the rule of law and guarantees of protection to the rights of the more vulnerable sections of society (women, children, members of the minority communities, workers, and political activists among the endangered species). The 55-year-old and admittedly moribund chapter on fundamental rights in the off-and-on constitution is quite inadequate in theory and more so in practice.
The people are yet to be conceded the right to work, to education, to enjoyment of health, to social security, to development and to a healthy environment. The rights that have been recognised are subject to laws that in quite a few cases make a mockery of constitutional promises no longer worthy of treatment as guarantees. Labour has been vigorously agitating for respecting the core ILO conventions.
As regards international human rights instruments, Pakistan has treated them with indifference, to put the matter mildly. Any country’s seriousness in respecting these instruments begins with ratification of the two covenants of 1966. The Pakistan establishment’s antipathy to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is no secret and the reason should be obvious to all. After years of haggle and sheer laziness, the establishment signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in November 2004 but it is yet to be ratified.
Of the core HR instruments, Pakistan has stubbornly ignored the Convention Against Torture and this despite a consensus among human rights activists at home and abroad on torture being endemic in the country. Pakistan’s obduracy in ignoring the Convention on Refugees is hard to understand, considering the long history and the huge size of the refugee problems it has faced.
At the same time Pakistan’s adherence to the international instruments it has ratified leaves much to be desired on three main counts. First, the protocols to the instruments, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), have not been signed.
The protocol to CEDAW is crucial to any scheme of protecting women’s rights as it opens the way to individual communication by the aggrieved women, a facility the women victims of discrimination urgently need. The protocols to the CRC also are unexceptional: the first protocol deals with employment of children in armed conflicts while the second one deals with the sale of children and their exploitation in prostitution and pornography.
Secondly, the task of fulfilling the obligations assumed under the international instruments that have been adhered to by Pakistan has rarely been addressed with due seriousness. The need to bring domestic legislation in harmony with CEDAW and CRC has more often than not been ignored. The establishment is also having difficulty in recognising the need for a strong human rights watchdog. A bill aimed at creating a national commission for human rights was at last tabled in the National Assembly in May last year but there is no evidence of any urgency attached to it. Apart from that, its defects have drawn criticism both at home and abroad.
Besides, the reporting obligations too have been treated most cavalierly. The reports under CERD have been due for two to eight years. The initial report under CEDAW was due in 1997 and the second periodic report in 2001. It is learnt that the initial report under CEDAW has been returned because it was much too long. Obviously its authors were unaware of the adage that those who speak loud and for long often do not have much to say.
Thirdly, Pakistan has been accused of lack of cooperation with UN Special rapporteurs. The Rapporteurs on the judiciary and freedom of information have consistently been denied invitation to visit Pakistan and the Rapporteurs on torture and minorities who were allowed one visit each complained of lack of cooperation and less than satisfactory responses to their queries.
Moreover, Pakistan apparently opted for notorious company by assuming a leading role in the activities of a so-called like-minded group at the late Commission on Human Rights, which was generally considered a cabal of reactionary regimes brought together by their distaste for democracy and basic freedoms and especially their opposition to women’s rights.
The sole purpose of this somewhat candid profile of Pakistan is to indicate to Islamabad the possibilities of raising its stock as a human rights counsel. Much more important than becoming a member of the Human Rights Council is presentation of Pakistan’s image as a country that addresses human rights issues in any part of the world on the strength of a healthy record at home. It is hardly necessary to point out that Pakistan’s weight in human rights bodies, even if it is elected to HRC, will be determined by its domestic portfolio. Besides, countries that maintain a good human rights record can wield considerable influence without being members of HRC.
Everything that needs to be done to increase Pakistan’s credibility as a genuine promoter of human rights cannot be done through short executive orders. The people’s aspirations for democratic governance and respect for pluralist fundamentals are unlikely to be realised by pushing a button or two. A long overdue revision and enlargement of the constitutional provisions on human rights and legislation to give effect to the related guarantees will obviously take time.
Nevertheless, some steps could be taken as demonstration of intent to carve out for the country the role of a dynamic champion of human rights. For instance, Pakistan can ratify the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and sign the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There should be no problem in signing the protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The bill on the National Commission on Human Rights could be reformed and put on priority legislation roster. The commissions on women, children and minorities (if it still exists) could be strengthened and their views guaranteed greater respect. The ILO recommendations on labour legislation and practices can be implemented in a matter of days.
Several candidates for the Human Rights Council, including a couple of Asian states, have appended to their announcement of candidacy declarations of their commitments, as pledges of practical steps in the furtherance of human rights. There will be no harm if Islamabad could do likewise. An even better course perhaps would be the presentation of a human rights policy-cum-programme before parliament in which time-bound initiatives, long-term as well as short-term, could be listed. All this is possible provided the desire to acquire distinction at the international level is backed by a strong will to bear the responsibility that accompanies such distinction and time can be found to heed the call of citizen’s interest.
The writer is Director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.