ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: Eminent experts urged the government at a seminar here on Thursday to adopt the International Bill of Rights and enable its citizens to benefit from the HR mechanisms evolved by the United Nations.

The seminar, entitled "The international covenant on economic, social, cultural rights and the international covenant on civil political rights", was organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's Centre for Democratic Development.

Pakistan, observed the HRCP director I.A. Rehman, had been a member of the United Nations since 1947 but it had tended to recognise it on selective basis, especially in the area of supporting the mechanisms established for the promotion of basic HRs.

Other speakers at the seminar were Dr Moonis Ahmar from the University of Karachi and Dr Ijaz Hussain, former dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Of the six instruments constituting the UN framework for HRs, Mr Rehman noted that Pakistan had ratified only three. These included the Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

He said Pakistan lagged behind all members of SAARC except for Bhutan. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have signed all the six instruments, India and Nepal 5 each and Maldives 4.

Even in comparison with Muslim countries, Pakistan fares poorly. The Muslim countries that have signed all the six instruments include Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Libya, Tajekistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Mr Rehman said Pakistan's lack of interest in the UN human rights machinery was also evident in irregular reporting and lack of seriousness in implementing the instruments it had ratified.

This "clearly means that while it might have ratified the UN instruments under one consideration or other, it has not displayed the requisite will to implement them," he remarked.

Mr Rehman said the government must ratify the Covenant on Economic and Social rights which is particularly important for the people of this country because the rights inscribed in it are more frequently violated or denied than the better known civil and political rights.

"Ratification of this instrument," he explained, "will give rise to respect for the right to work and oblige the government to report periodically on what it does to guarantee this fundamental right."

The second covenant included in International Bill of Rights pertains to Civil and Political Rights. It enlarges the definition of basic rights inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Its enforceability can be guaranteed only if the Optional Protocol to the Covenant is ratified so that the citizens of a state might be able to take their grievances against their authorities to the international committee.

Mr Rehman rebutted the argument often given by the government that the citizens of a number of states that had ratified the covenants and other instruments did not enjoy the prescribed rights. Ratification of covenants, he argued, would oblige the state to look at the problems in a manner it had not done so far and to report periodically on its performance.

It was due to this reporting procedure that Pakistan had to withdraw the reservations it had expressed while ratifying the CRC, he recalled. Dr Moonis Ahmar said Pakistan could improve its image by acceding to the UN framework of human rights.

Indeed, the government had added human rights to the portfolio of Ministry of Law and Justice and set up its directorates in the four provincial capitals. But it had not adopted the International Bill of Human Rights because these would render it answerable on issues like capital punishment; honour killings; misuse of authority by the law-enforcement agencies while conducting various operations; extra-judicial killings; detention without trial and other violations of human rights.

Dr Ijaz Hussain said, beginning with the UDHR, which was not binding, there had emerged in the world a culture of human rights. In the beginning, the emerging nation states asserted their sovereignty vis-a-vis any actions at the international level to hold them answerable for HR violations.

But since 1970s, the HR instruments had increasingly acquired an authoritative status with the result that violation of human rights was no longer a matter outside the arena of international intervention.