Creating an atmosphere for final settlement: Kashmir: a peace plan-II

THE sequence of measures which would resolve the situation needs to be less dramatic and inciteful than a plebiscite, whether regional or state-wide, which would inevitably carry a huge baggage of rhetoric and arouse all the polemical furies. What is needed is a practical, step-by-step extrication of the state from a tragic muddle. But it should not be a matter merely of atmospherics, either.

Both these requirements, one positive and the other negative, would be met by simultaneous election under unquestionably impartial auspices in both India-held and Azad Kashmir of a People’s Provisional Assembly. (No rigged elections). On the convening of the Assembly, the representatives of each region would be asked to vote whether they wished the existing relationship with India or Pakistan to continue or to negotiate a relationship with either or both of them de novo. The region whose representatives would vote for the status quo would thereupon cease to be subject to any international contention; its affairs would fall within the internal jurisdiction of the government whose sovereignty it had accepted.

However, the representatives of the region which would opt for a new relationship would then nominate a small team to negotiate with the governments of both India and Pakistan the terms of the status of their region. Based on the outcome of these negotiations, this team would frame recommendations which would be submitted to a popular ‘yes or no’ referendum in the region for final decision. Both India and Pakistan would be committed in advance to accept the result of the affirmative vote in the referendum. The less likely negative vote would entail renewed negotiations.

This is only a rough sketch of a plan whose many details would need to be carefully worked out. Its essence is that it neither favours nor rules out any conceivable solution, be it accession in whole or in part to either India or Pakistan or full or quasi-independence for any region or the separation or association of any two regions. All these matters it leaves to be decided in a graduated process by the representatives of the people of each region without any undue pressure.

However, as important as the plan for the final decision is the preparation for its being launched. This predicates a number of measures the two governments will have to undertake in cooperation. It will take a great deal of statesmanship and a large-hearted vision to usher in the appropriate atmosphere for the final peaceful settlement of a dispute which has lasted more than half a century and doomed the fortunes of a large proportion of the human race.

First of all, killings must end. Only a visible movement towards resolving the basic conflict will lend credibility to the stoppage of fighting. In view of the multiplicity of anti-occupation groups, the initiative in this regard needs to be taken by the government of India which must declare a cease-fire from a specified early date.

Immediately on this declaration, the Hurriyet Conference must issue a strong appeal to all fighting groups, indigenous or foreign, to reciprocate and the government of Pakistan must urge all groups originating from Pakistan to cease hostilities and give peace-making a fair chance or else face severe penalties and total loss of popular support. This should be the start of the preparatory phase.

During this phase, while leaving the existing administrative machinery in place in both India-held and Azad Kashmir, the two governments would agree to (a) withdraw their forces to a mutually agreed distance from their borders; (b) drastically reduce their forces stationed inside the State; (c) initiate a demilitarization of the Siachen glacier — an uninhabited, inaccessible place of no strategic or economic importance to either party; (d) urge their nationals who actively support the insurgency to leave the State; (e) facilitate the return of all citizens displaced by the conflict in the State; (f) release all political prisoners in the State; (g) declare complete freedom of speech and assembly in all parts of the State and freedom of movement from one part to another for the citizens of the State.

It would be made clear that the freedom of expression meant unthreatening freedom as much to assert as to challenge any position regarding the status or future of the state or any part thereof. The provision in (d) recalls one in the United Nations agreement which Pakistan has accepted and which, one can be sure, it will be ready to implement with full force once the stage is credibly set for a peaceful settlement.

It is easy to imagine a facile reaction to a proposed peace plan like the one I have sketched; the proposal will be dismissed on the alleged ground that India will not accept it. This is the kind of reaction which, as much as any obduracy on the part of the Indian government, has disfranchised the soberer elements in India’s political life and has greatly contributed to the impasse over the Kashmir issue.

In the first place, if quick acceptance by either India or Pakistan were the criterion for the soundness of any proposal, then we might as well rest content with the status quo and let the situation take the ruinous course it will for lack of corrective action. (Actually, some elements in Pakistan will also tend to demur to the plan on the ground , not an unreasonable one, that it puts Indian and Pakistani forces on the same footing while their conduct within the State has been of diametrically opposed character.)

Secondly, such a reaction belittles India. Is it reasonable to suppose that in a great country like India, with its millions of educated people, there are not sections of opinion which realize that India is being diminished by the Kashmir dispute and that its settlement would restore its ability to play the great power role it is entitled to.

Cannot a large number of thoughtful Indians see the inestimable benefits that would flow as much to India as to Pakistan from a settlement? The release of energies and resources apart, each would gain lawfully acquired territory and have securely recognized frontiers for the first time since their independence. That the hostility between India and Pakistan is ineradicable is a pernicious myth; the state of their current mutual relations is not biologically caused anymore than the centuries old relations between France and Germany proved to be. India should not be equated with the killers of Gujarat ( India’s redoubtable Home Minister Advani notwithstanding).

Another harmful reaction to peace proposals of the kind outlined here is based on their discordance with imagined American preferences. This strengthens the prejudice that America dislikes any proposal which is not hammered on its own anvil. It is an optical illusion that the world’s only superpower is also, or takes itself to be, a one-power United Nations. I doubt that America’s political intellect and its innate spirit will harbour that illusion. Nor, I believe, will the American conscience tolerate that the war against terrorism should degenerate into a defence of tyrannies and usurpations.

A potential strength of the kind of plan set out above is that it can enlist local support in all the regions of the state. Even though their affiliations and sympathies are widely different, they all stand to benefit from a definitive settlement and all would welcome a release from the present agonizing uncertainty. But impartiality in its execution is the soul and substance of the plan. To secure it, the assistance of the United Nations will be indispensable in two respects. The first is the definition of the five cantons.

The secretary-general will need to be approached to set up a small commission of geographers (not from the subcontinent) with unchallengeable credentials to demarcate the cantons. The second is setting up a machinery for the supervision and control of elections to the provisional assembly.

The world body has gained unparalleled experience in diverse areas of devising methods to assure the fairest possible voting : these methods apply from the preparation of the electoral rolls to the counting of the poll.

The credit it would acquire from employing that experience to help solve as intractable and consequential a problem as Kashmir would reinvigorate the sinews of ordered international life.

Two other benefits would also flow from the course of action suggested here. Cooperation with the United Nations would raise India’s own stature immeasurably. And by helping to promote it, the United States would shed some of the odium it has incurred in the Iraq context because of its attitude towards the United Nations.

More than four decades ago, I had the occasion to write that the Kashmir dispute will never be settled by the United Nations but it will never be settled without the United Nations. If by settlement we mean something more than a shallow truce or a patchwork arrangement, that holds true even today.

The writer is a former federal minister of Pakistan.

Concluded

The road to Cancun

IT was with some reluctance that the developing world agreed to the launch of yet another round of trade negotiations. That decision was taken in Doha in November 2001 — the reason why the new round bears the name of that city. Will the Doha round give the developing world what it was promised almost two years ago?

The answer to this question may come from the ministerial meeting that begins at Cancun tomorrow. This meeting comes at a critical time for the Doha negotiations. At Doha, developing countries had agreed to the launch of another round of trade negotiations on the condition that the changes that were to be made in the world’s trade regime would have a decisive impact on promoting development. The world’s rich countries agreed to their demand and went as far as to call the Doha discussions a development round.

There is a widespread feeling among developing countries that the world trading order as it evolved after the conclusion of the previous round of negotiations — the Uruguay round — discriminates against them. This impression is based on a number of things that did not go right once that round was completed in 1995 and the World Trade Organization was established to oversee the emergence of a new system of world trade.

The main achievement of the Uruguay round was to move towards the establishment of a rule-based trading regime which created the capacity, within the WTO, to act as a quasi-court to settle trade disputes among nations. Countries hurt by the actions taken by the nations they traded with and which caused grievous harm to them could appeal to the WTO. The WTO’s findings, made by a panel of experts it appointed, were to be binding. This was the first time that the world’s principal trading nations were prepared to subject their policies to review by a multilateral organization.

This feature of the new trade order was called the dispute resolution mechanism. How well has the system worked and has it provided palpable relief to the developing world is an important question which we will not attempt to answer today. What we will address is the damage done to the developing countries by the various loopholes that were quite deliberately put in the new system. The world’s rich countries have driven a series of highly protectionist policies through these gaping holes.

The widest of these is the allowance given to the rich — in particular the countries of Europe — to continue to protect their farmers. The Common Agriculture Policy, or CAP, is one of the cornerstones of the European Union’s economic system. It has been jealously protected by the European nations not only against the pressure of the United States but also of the developing world.

Not only the European CAP but also some of the policies adopted by the United States to protect its farmers cost the developing world dearly. The World Bank has estimated that some $300 billion a year is spent by the US and the European Union to subsidize their farmers. The US-EU subsidies to agriculture make up more than 30 per cent of farm revenues. Two-thirds of these transfers come in the form of price support. On average, it has been estimated that the prices the farmers receive for their output are 31 per cent above what they will get in international trade. This introduces a tremendous distortion in trade in agricultural products.

For instance, the price paid to dairy farmers for milk is 80 per cent above the international price. It is 100 per cent more for sugar and as much as 360 per cent for rice. Such high prices can only be maintained behind high walls of tariff. Indeed, it is estimated that agricultural tariffs are still about 10 times higher than those for manufacturing products. In countries with surplus farm products which is the case for the United States and some of the larger European nations, such high prices also rely on export subsidies. The latter cause grievous harm to the countries of the developing world that have farm surpluses of their own available for exports.

Since some of this analytical work on the cost of rich countries’ farm policies has been done at such development institutions as the World Bank, the suggestion is often made that reducing farm subsidies would make additional funds available for foreign aid. After all, the governments have already budgeted for the subsidies. Transferring them to the developing world would not result in additional burden on the taxpayers.

If farm subsidy was entirely eliminated, and if this amount was provided to the developing world, the amount of official development assistance would increase seven-fold, from the current $50 billion a year to $350 billion. It is extremely unlikely that the world’s rich nations would accept either of these two proposals — to cut all farm subsidies and to transfer the entire amount saved as aid to poor nations.

Nonetheless, the developing world ministers have gone to Cancun equipped with enough analysis of the enormous harm done to them to get some action on these matters from Europe, North America and Japan. But ultimately it is politics not economics that will determine the outcome of the Cancun meeting and the fate of the Doha round. The reasons for Europe’s intransigence and America’s pressure on the continent to open its agriculture systems are mostly political. The farming community in several parts of Europe continues to be politically powerful. This is particularly the case in France. In the US, agriculture is much more productive than is the case in Europe. Although the Americans also provide support to their farmers, scaling down — even totally eliminating — subsidies will not cause much damage to its agricultural system. Even within an open agricultural trade regime, the United States will remain the world’s granary and a major supplier of the agricultural inputs needed by industries around the globe.

There was a great deal of diplomatic activity as various groups of countries prepared for the Cancun meeting. Some breakthroughs were made in these preparatory talks. The Germans put pressure on the French to accept a change in the very basis of the Common Agricultural Policy. Rather than provide farmers with price support that resulted in excessive production — we have all heard of Europe’s sugar and butter mountains — it would be economically more efficient and more helpful to the developing world if the farmers were provided help with income support, argued the Germans.

In that case the farmers would not have to produce vast quantities of output resulting in depressing international prices in order to earn support from the government. The French were persuaded to accept this change which also led to an EU-US agreement on changes to the farm subsidies approach.

This approach is good for farmers. Economists have long argued that payments that are not coupled to production are much more efficient in raising the incomes of the people working the land. The work done at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has shown that of each dollar of assistance provided to agriculture through price support, no more than 25 cents end up in the pockets of the farmers. “The rest goes to landlords, is capitalized in land values, or is needed to cover extra costs of production. Decoupled payments can double the amount retained by the farm operators.”

While these discussions were going on among the rich nations, developing countries were also working to evolve a common position. These resulted in the demand by some 15 developing countries led by Brazil, China and India, which together account for 60 per cent of the world’s farmers, for the elimination of export subsidies which had a direct bearing on international agricultural commodity prices. But the developing countries will ask for much more at Cancun.

Creating a level playing field is one of the several mantras employed by those who advocate free — or relatively free — trade among nations. But the playing fields are far from being level and it seems highly unlikely that the steep slopes that still exist can be taken out in the Cancun negotiations. In so far as developing countries are concerned, they are at a disadvantage in several different ways.

When developing countries export to industrialized countries they have to contend with tariffs four times higher on average than those applied to trade among industrialized countries. Rich countries also apply what economists call “tariff escalation” in their trade with the developing world. This means that the products processed from the raw materials produced by these countries are taxed at a higher rate than the inputs. Thus textiles fibre has a lower tariff than garments. This structure inhibits the developing world from moving up the production chain, the only way they can increase the incomes of their workforce.

The second place where the playing field is not particularly level is because of the absence in the developing world of finance, institutions and infrastructure that makes it easier and cheaper for developed countries to process their product into higher valued crops. Thus the citrus growers in Florida can much more easily process their oranges into juice than the farmers who grow the same fruit in Pakistan’s central Punjab.

Finally, the developing world has done little to level the playing field in trade among themselves. These countries must recognize that intra-developing world trade holds some of their best prospects for increasing exports. Some of the world’s highest tariff barriers exist between developing countries making their products too expensive to sell in one another’s markets. Some developing countries have added to high tariffs all kinds of other restrictions to trade. This is particularly the case for the South Asian nations.

Levelling the playing field, therefore, requires action from a number of different quarters. Rich countries must recognize that by calling the Doha negotiations the development round, they made the commitment to help poor countries gain better access to their markets, particularly for the goods and commodities in which they clearly have a comparative advantage. Developing countries themselves must look at their trade regimes and make adjustments in order to increase the flow of trade among themselves.

And, multilateral development institutions must factor in trade promotion in their own programmes and projects in the developing world. With focus placed on trade, they will begin to recognize that they have to begin making investments in infrastructural projects.

At Cancun, rich countries are likely to press for greater opening of developing countries’ markets. This should happen but not to the extent likely to be demanded by the developed world. There is a likelihood that at Cancun we will see considerable pressure on large developing countries — Brazil, China, India and South Africa — to come closer to the trading regimes in the developed world by lowering the wall of tariff that still protects their industries. This wall was kept in place in the previous rounds of negotiations on the basis of what was called the infant industry argument. That argument is now difficult to apply to these countries.

Cancun is an important meeting. Its outcome will lay the ground for the evolution of the global trading system. What happens at the meeting will be explored in a later article of this continuing series on trade.

A sea of troubles

AN oil-spill does not qualify as a natural calamity such as an earthquake or a cyclone. There is in an oil spill an element of human error or negligence and it should not be difficult to fix responsibility.

But who must carry the blame for the slow response and the half-hearted and somewhat amateur efforts to contain or minimise the havoc it has caused? The only good news so far is that the beaches will be open to the public in two months time but there is no guarantee that the beaches will be free of health hazards. We are pretty clueless about the magnitude of the ecological disaster.

So far, all that seems to be happening is a flurry of law suits. The PNSC is claiming one billion rupees (or is it dollars?) from the owners of the ill-fated Tasman Spirit and the KPT is claiming an equivalent amount from the PNSC and there is an omnibus, pro bono law suit brought by high profile private citizens which would seem to come in the category of “to whom it may concern.”

The lawyers will certainly be kept busy and knowing that court cases can be dragged for many years, the ‘justice’ that is being sought will be delayed. In the meanwhile, it may be a good idea not to eat fish, that is, if any fish are still swimming around in a sea that had already been polluted and now must battle through the crude oil. An oil-spill cannot be foreseen but there is such a thing as crisis-management and that has never been our strong suit.

As if, this was not bad enough. There are signs that the already fragile law and order may break down with targeted killings that bear the marks of political in-fighting. Targeted killings bring reprisals and reprisals bring more violence and we get trapped in a vicious cycle. It is the people, by-standers who are not political zealots who must bear the brunt of this blood-letting.

Karachi was once a peaceful city and then it became a lawless city and politics became indistinguishable from crime and crime from politics. Then a certain uneasy calm followed and that calm is in danger of being disturbed. This has nothing to do with the run-of-the mill crime, car-jackings, dacoities, kidnappings and armed hold-ups in broad daylight which we dismiss as standard fare of all big cities, as something that goes with the territory.

Rarely, if ever, do these criminals get caught. At the end of each news item about these crimes is a sentence that has become a given and reads like a statement of the obvious: the criminals escaped.

Personal security has become a growth industry and the wealthier among us employ them and the guards have become an essential component of a household. The others, which means most of us, have to take our chances. In this age of jumbo jets, the chowkidar has become a DC-3.

One of the advantages of not living in Islamabad is one’s ears are not constantly buzzing with political rumours and gossip, the making and unmaking of governments, of dissolutions of assemblies, the sacking of ministers, the transfer of senior bureaucrats and all that that passes for the political process and which we keep insisting is democracy.

I don’t even visit Islamabad any more now that Farooq Mazhar does not live there. He has passed on. Because he was a journalist he was well up on all the shenanigans and kept me abreast of what was happening and what was likely to happen. Half the time he was right and half the time he was wrong. It did not seem to matter though he was inclined to take himself seriously as a political pundit. But he loved the hustle and he made politics seem relevant.

Far from Islamabad, I must now rely on the newspapers and I have to make my own assessment, which is not difficult to do. With de’ja vu as my guiding star, it seems that nothing has changed, even the script has not been dusted up, the same deck-of-cards syndrome, no matter how they are shuffled, they come out only as variations. There is at present an impasse. But it’s about loaves and fishes and not about the problems of the people which seem to multiply as each day is lived with not just personal hardship but with an anxiety about the very dangerous neighbourhood in which Pakistan is located.

It is not India alone that we should be concerned with and which takes so much of our energy but the international situation which is getting messier and may suck us in. The United States is fighting the war against terrorism, not to make the world safe but to make the United States safe. It does not seem to matter that in pursuit of this policy, the world itself has got endangered.

This week, the second anniversary of 9/11 will be observed. Osama Bin Laden has neither been captured nor killed. The Al Qaeda is very much functional, if western media is to be believed. Indeed, it seems to be re-grouping and the fighting in Afghanistan goes beyond mopping up operations. Real battles are being fought.

The War in Iraq has gone horribly wrong, so horribly wrong that the United States is trying to get the United Nations , considered irrelevant by George Bush not so long ago, to get involved, to provide some post-facto legitimacy.

The Middle East road map is all but dead and Israel is carrying out a vicious campaign of terror with impunity and with the tacit, if not, explicit encouragement of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. It is the Hamas militants who are being blamed for the anarchy in Palestine not the Israeli army who are killing innocent men, women and children as if these were not human lives. No one doubts that the Israeli army can be stopped if the United States were to order it to do so. There have not been any strong words of condemnation even. As we ponder that state of the world on the second anniversary of 9/11, we must ask ourselves the basic question: Is the war on terrorism being won or lost?

Recovering losses from oil spill

ON August 14, the Maltese registered oil tanker, Tasman Spirit, broke apart, spilling an estimated 28,000 tonnes of oil into Karachi’s coastal waters. The cause of the incident and the extent of the resulting damage are yet to be ascertained, but experts warn that it is potentially “a major disaster” with far-reaching environmental and economic consequences.

Now, what international law options are potentially available to the Pakistani government and other affected parties for recovering losses resulting from the oil spill? In a major maritime oil pollution disaster, the primary source of recovery is usually under the Civil Liability Convention 1992 (CLC 1992) and the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund 1992 (“the Fund”). To claim compensation under the CLC 1992 or the Fund, damage must be suffered in a country that is a party to the appropriate convention. The flag state of the tanker and the nationality of the owner are irrelevant for determining the scope of application. As Pakistan is not a party to either the CLC 1992 or the Fund, it will not be able to claim under these conventions.

The CLC 1992 provides a straight forward and prompt mechanism for recovering the costs of clean-up measures and pollution damage on a strict liability basis (i.e. liability regardless of fault) from the tanker owner and its insurers, subject to limited exceptions.

If Pakistan was a party to the CLC 1992, anyone suffering damage from the resulting pollution (e.g. individuals, corporations, the government and its agencies) could bring a claim for compensation against the tanker owner or directly against its insurer without the need to prove fault in lengthy and costly litigation. Such claims could have included costs of clean-up and measures taken to prevent or minimize pollution damage, property damage, economic loss (e.g. reduction in income from tourism or fishery) and the cost of restoration of the environment.

Under the CLC 1992, the tanker owner’s liability is capped by reference to the tonnage of the vessel (e.g. the maximum amount of compensation available for a 50,000 tonne tanker would be US$31 million). However, this limit does not apply where the damage results from the owner’s personal act or omission with the requisite intention or recklessness.

Where the amount under the CLC 1992 is insufficient to meet the costs of the pollution damage, a further layer of compensation is available from the Fund. If Pakistan was a member of the Fund, the maximum combined compensation potentially available would be approximately US$189 million.

As the CLC 1992 and the Fund regimes do not apply, claims will need to be brought under Pakistani law. Potential defendants would include the tanker owners (Asimina Maritime Limited); the servants or agents of the owner or the crew members (criminal action may, in certain circumstances, be appropriate against the captain and his crew); the charterers (PNSC) and the managers/operators (Polembros Shipping Limited).

Tasman Spirit’s Classification Society could also be a potential defendant. While actions against Classification Societies have been traditionally unsuccessful, it might be possible to bring a claim if there is strong evidence of negligence by the relevant Classification Society in issuing a classification certificate.

Claims against the port agencies of other countries may be possible, if they negligently or recklessly inspected or “cleared” the Tasman Spirit en route to Karachi.

Further, under the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, any state that allows vessels to be registered under its flag has duties to ensure the vessel’s safety at sea, and this obligation is emphasized in relation to oil pollution.

As the Tasman Spirit is registered in Malta, it may be worth exploring whether the Maltese agencies have breached

their relevant duties as a flag state.

The Karachi Port Trust (KPT) has fined Tasman Spirit’s owner US$200,000 for pollution. According to the KPT, all salvage and drainage expenses will be paid by the tanker owner and its insurers. Recent reports indicate that the KPT has sued the PNSC for damages for up to US$1 billion.

The PNSC, in turn, is considering to proceed against the tanker owner and its agents. The incident has already sparked public interest litigation in the national courts — Rupees 10 billion in damages are sought against the Federation of Pakistan, the trustees of the port of Karachi, Pakistan national shipping corporation and the federal environmental protection agency.

The costs of salvage and clean-up are just some of the many losses that will result from the Tasman oil spillage. Even if Tasman’s insurers agree to foot this bill, they will be limited by the cap of their insurance policy.

Then, there is the question of other losses, particularly the costs of the environmental damage. Under their charter party with the PNSC, Tasman Spirit’s owners warranted to take out insurance cover for oil pollution damages up to US$1 billion, so in theory funds should be available to pay the compensation.

However, those affected may be left without compensation if recovery from the owners, their agents or insurers is insufficient or not possible. If Pakistan was a party to the Fund, up to US$189 million could have potentially been available to all those affected by the oil spill, including the Pakistani government, without a need to prove fault. Instead, the claimants must now battle for compensation in possibly complicated and protracted litigation.

The Pakistan government has come under heavy public criticism for its response to the incident. More public outcry is likely to follow if those affected are unable to recover their losses. There will be a need to explain why Pakistan did not join the CLC 1992 and the Fund.

Over one hundred countries have ratified either or both the CLC 1992 and the Fund. However, legislators should be careful not to rush into signing international conventions under public pressure without a thorough analysis of their consequences.

There are no direct costs for the Pakistan government in becoming a party to the CLC 1992 and the Fund. The potential financial obligations under the CLC 1992 are backed by the compulsory insurance tanker owners are required to maintain.

The Fund, on the other hand, is financed by levies on companies (public or private) based in the member states that receive more than 150,000 tonnes of oil annually by sea. Pakistan’s oil imports were around five million tonnes in the last fiscal year alone. Therefore, the Pakistani government may end up indirectly paying for the Fund’s membership through levies charged on state owned oil companies.

Pakistan can become a party to the CLC 1992 without joining the Fund. However, signing the CLC 1992 without joining the Fund will only provide limited comfort as compensation will be restricted to the amount of the owner’s insurance. In cases where the losses exceed this insurance (or even where insurance is not available or the owner is exempt), the Fund’s resources offer relief.

While the risk of a major oil spill may be small, its consequences can be enormous. In the Prestige oil-spill off the Spanish coast, only 17.5 million pounds were available from the tanker owner’s insurance while the Fund allotted 154.3 million pounds as Spain was a member state.

On the other hand, in the Exxon Valdez spill off the Alaskan coast, there was no recourse to the CLC 1992 or the Fund as the US is not a party to these conventions.

However, Exxon paid $2.2 billion in clean up costs and $300 million to affected Alaskans. Having said that, not all tankers are owned by large corporations like Exxon and if the oil spill results from a tanker owned by a small company with limited insurance cover, there is a risk of recovering no compensation at all. In view of the amount of oil moving through Pakistani waters, ‘paying’ for the Fund’s protection may be worth considering.

A disaster such as the Tasman Spirit oil spill can be more than a tragedy, it can be a wake-up call. Pakistan must now consider in earnest how best to exploit international conventions and funds discussed to better protect itself from future crises like the Tasman oil spillage.

The writer is a lawyer and specialises in international dispute resolution.