Pakistan’s inability to honour its obligations has caused embarrassment at the UN—AFP Photo

PAKISTAN’S inability to honour its obligations under international treaties has often caused it embarrassment at the United Nations. Nothing proves this better than the treatment its periodic reports under the UN conventions receive from the relevant committees.

 

For example, Pakistan cut a sorry figure at the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination this year when its report under the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was scrutinised. The committee’s observations – they could well be described as strictures – underline the need for a reorientation of Islamabad’s outlook on international human rights instruments. An earnest effort to strengthen the Foreign Office’s capacity for drawing up its reports should be high on the national agenda.

 

Pakistan ratified the CERD in January 1969. (What made the Ayub regime take the plunge a few weeks before it collapsed is not clear.) It is required to submit a report every two years on actions taken to implement the provisions of the convention. These reports are invariably delayed by many years.

 

This year the UN committee considered Pakistan’s 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th periodic reports that were due in January 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. (Earlier, the 10th to 14th periodic reports had been submitted in a single document after a decade-long delay.) On this the UN committee says: ‘Noting that the report was almost 10 years overdue when submitted, the committee invites the state party to observe the deadlines set for the submission of its reports in future.’

 

Since the report was submitted by the Musharraf regime in January 2008 the present government cannot be blamed for its flaws but there must be some evidence to show that matters are now better understood.

 

The contents of the 55-page report provide much cause for hilarity. Beginning with a description of the land and its people (two pages), it devotes a little less than two pages to the ‘general political structure’ and more than six pages to the local government system (the National Reconstruction Bureau’s input perhaps). After describing the country’s judicial system the report discloses that ‘the constitution of Pakistan has significant human rights content’ and goes on to describe the constitutional, legal and administrative framework.

 

A number of laws are mentioned ‘which directly or indirectly give effect to provisions of the convention (CERD)’. These laws include: The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, the Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Mines Maternity Benefit Ordinance, the Civil Servants Rules.

 

A number of pages are devoted to development schemes for the religious minorities and details of civil awards conferred on non-Muslims. Also mentioned are the radio/TV programmes presented on non-Muslims’ festivals. A fundamental flaw in the report is the assumption that whatever is provided in the constitution and the law for all citizens is duly available to all racial or ethnic groups/minorities. A claim no one can prove.

 

It seems the UN committee and the Pakistan government are operating on different wavelengths. While Pakistan is expected to describe its performance in preventing and eliminating racial discrimination, the report dwells largely on the promises offered in the constitution and laws. Besides, the report refers most of the time to religious minorities but this does not fully cover Pakistan’s obligation to eliminate discrimination against ethnic, linguistic and racial minorities.

 

The committee welcomes Pakistan’s ‘acknowledgment of the intersectionality, to a certain extent, of ethnicity and religion’ but ‘reiterates its recommendation that the state party broaden its understanding and constitutional definition regarding minorities, so as to take into account all the grounds of discrimination included in Article 1, paragraph 1 of the convention’.

 

In plain words, the UN committee wishes the Pakistan government to re-read and comprehend the following paragraph (Article 1, para 1 of the CERD): ‘In this convention, the term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.’

 

It seems that in addition to their lack of comprehension of their obligations under the CERD, Pakistani authorities find little activity worth reporting. They have tried to cover the poverty of their brief by making inappropriate claims. For instance, the requirement of consulting NGOs before finalising the report is said to have been satisfied when the then minister for human rights held a single meeting in December 2007 (the black emergency days) with some NGOs that included ‘Pakistan Christians’ and ‘Human Rights Mission of Pakistan’ but it is doubtful if the government had tried to talk to organisations specialising in the plight of ethnic, linguistic and racial minorities.

 

Similarly much is claimed to have been achieved by the National Commission for Minorities which held five meetings between 1997 and 2006! Most Pakistanis are unaware of the exploits of this commission which does not even have its separate secretariat. Further, one is at a loss to understand the relevance of the case Masroor Ahsan vs Ardeshir Cowasjee (PLD 1988 SC 823) to the CERD.

 

The result of going to the UN with an inadequate and misconceived report is that Paksitan has been asked:

 

– To provide information on the representation of ethnic groups in government and public services in the next periodic report and also ‘to legislate and mainstream the existing policy on the provision of adequate political participation of all ethnic groups’.

 

– To ensure that all persons enjoy their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, without any discrimination based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.

 

– To inform the committee ‘of measures taken to eradicate the social acceptance of racial and ethnic prejudice, e.g., by intensifying public education and awareness-raising campaigns, incorporating educational objectives of tolerance and respect for other ethnicities, as well as instruction on the culture of all minorities, and ensuring adequate media representation of issues concerning all ethnic and religious minorities, with a view to achieving true social cohesion among all ethnic groups, castes and tribes of Pakistan’.

 

The set of the UN committee’s concerns and recommendations spread over 25 paragraphs (six pages of the report) make a number of demands on Pakistan which must be answered in a single document comprising the 21st and 22nd periodic reports due in January 2012, that is, only 27 months from now.

 

Is it too much to expect the government to put its act together over the next two years and make a sincere effort to tell the world what it is actually doing to guarantee the basic rights, for instance, of the Baloch, the Seraiki-speaking people, the Kalash people, the scheduled castes in Sindh, the Ahmadis and the indigenous people?