ISLAMABAD: Rights activists and members of civil society demanded that the government ensure compliance with all the international conventions on climate change and human and labour rights before the next compliance report on GSP+ status is presented in the European Parliament.

These reports are presented in the EU parliament every two years and detail Pakistan’s compliance with various treaties in order to avail GSP+ preferential treatment in exports.

The matter was raised by activists at a press conference at the National Press Club on Thursday, where Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Executive Director Karamat Ali and Shahzad Ahmed from Bytes for All said the implementation of human and labour rights in domestic law is the most serious challenging facing the country.

They highlighted the gulf between promulgated laws in theory and their implementation, which deals with providing practical benefits to society.

At press conference, civil society members criticised lack of progress in implementation of 27 UN conventions

The EU provided Pakistan a 10-year trade incentive scheme in 2014 in the form of the Generalised Scheme of Preference Plus (GSP+) status, which ensured duty-free exports to EU countries.

In return, Pakistan has to implement 27 United Nations conventions regarding human rights, labour rights, climate change and good governance.

On Thursday, activists criticised the little progress made in this regard in the last six years.

Mr Ali said the next report on Pakistan’s performance will be presented in the EU parliament in January 2020.

“Two previous reports indicated gaps, but there was little progress in this regard,” he said.

Mr Ali called on EU member states to provide a benchmark to review progress on the implementation of the 27 international treaties over the next four years.

While discussing the state of labour rights, Mr Ali said trade unions in the country are finding it difficult to exercise their rights to association and collective bargaining.

“At the same time, there are severe restrictions on human rights organisations, as they are unable to exercise their fundamental rights of association and freedom of speech,” he said.

According to an International Labour Organisation report, only 5pc of Pakistan’s labour force is organised under trade unions, a violation of the right to association.

It was also announced at the press conference that a national-level convention will be held in Islamabad on Jan 11 and 12 to formalise the labour confederation.

Civil society members have prepared a memorandum to be presented to the government to improve the labour and human rights situation in the country.

Key points in the memorandum include raising the minimum age for work in all federal and provincial laws to 18 in order to harmonise it with the age of completion of compulsory schooling laws, taking necessary measures to provide free compulsory education to all children to effectively abolish child labour, devising specific laws in compliance with ILO Convention No.111 to ensure the right to equal pay for work of equal value and adding a specific clause in all provincial labour laws in this regard and increasing the minimum wage in accordance with the rising cost of living due to inflation and other factors.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2019