Earlier this week, Pakistan went through its first review of its implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT).
The scathing review highlighted Pakistan’s glaring failures to comply with the provisions of CAT and should push all institutions of the state to reconsider their perfunctory engagement with UN human rights mechanisms.
Pakistan ratified CAT in 2010, undertaking to put in place a wide range of legislative, administrative, judicial, policy or other measures to effectively implement the Convention provisions. In January 2016, four years after it was due, Pakistan eventually lodged its initial report under CAT with the Committee Against Torture –the body of ten independent experts from around the world established under the Convention to monitor State parties’ compliance with and implementation of its provisions.
At the review, the Committee posed a number of questions to Pakistan’s delegation, which was led by the Minister for Human Rights, Senator Kamran Michael; and also comprised the Minister of State for Law and Justice, Barrister Zafarullah Khan; the Secretary ofthe Ministry of Human Rights, Rabiya Javeri Agha; and seven other Government representatives.
In the next couple of weeks, the CAT Committee will consider Pakistan’s responses and information provided by other stakeholders, in particular domestic and international non-governmental human rights organizations including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the International Commission of Jurists, the Justice Project Pakistan, OMCT and others. In light of all this information, the CAT Committee will then adopt and issue its concluding observations, including a number of highly authoritative recommendations to enhance Pakistan’s compliance with the Convention.
At the start of the review, the Committee expressed its disappointment that key stakeholders were absent, including representatives from the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), who were not present at the review despite the NHRC’s express mandate to work on ensuring Pakistan’s compliance with international human rights instruments. The Government delegation claimed the NHRC’s absence was not deliberate, but caused by issues of “procedure and time-frame”. This is not a convincing explanation, especially as the CAT review was scheduled months ago, giving the Government adequate time to coordinate with the NCHR and make arrangements for its participation in the examination. The Committee also regretted that officials from the military or intelligence agencies were not present to respond to a number of serious human rights allegations against their members.
In its report and in the delegation’s opening remarks Pakistan stated that torture and other ill-treatment are adequately criminalized in the country and independent mechanisms are in place to conduct impartial investigations and hold perpetrators accountable. Tellingly, however, the delegation gave no example of any state official ever being convicted in connection with human rights violations. Instead, in the State report, it described convictions for murder and rape by private individuals as examples that torture is taken very seriously by the authorities.
The CAT committee pointed out this glaring omission a number of times, and repeatedly requested specific data from the State delegation on the cases where a member of the police, military or intelligence agencies was successfully prospected and convicted for acts amounting to torture. To underscore its concern on this point, the Committee referred to a number of cases where there were specific allegations against members of the security agencies, including Zeenat Shahzadi’s alleged enforced disappearance in August 2015; Aftab Ahmed’s alleged torture and extrajudicial killing in May 2016; the abductions of at least four bloggers from various cities in the country in January 2017; and the enforced disappearance of at least 28 people by the armed forces, which had been acknowledged by the Supreme Court in 2013.
In its replies, the delegation referred to a number of on-going disciplinary proceedings and criminal investigations; however, it failed to provide even a single example of a successful prosecution or conviction, including in the specific cases highlighted by the Committee. The delegation’s response led the CAT committee to remark what many in the country have been saying for years: mechanisms for accountability and oversight for law enforcement and security agencies are completely absent in Pakistan, leading to a crisis of impunity for human rights violations.
This observation was not received very well by Barrister Zafarullah Khan, who responded to the Committee’s concern about impunity by alleging that the delegation was being put “in the dock”, and that “castigation” by the Committee could discourage the State delegation from constructive engagement. His fiery -and at times antagonistic – responses were an interesting contrast to the statements made by the Minister for Human Rights, Kamran Michael, who concluded by categorically stating Pakistan took its international human rights obligations very seriously and looked forward to working with the Committee on improving areas where there were shortcomings.
Statements expressing Pakistan’s unconditional commitment to the international human rights framework are perhaps one of the key takeaways from the review, as they also serve as an important acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders. This is particularly significant in the current context, where human rights advocates are often chastised for working on a “foreign agenda”, including by many members of the Government.
Questions by UN human rights bodies and the international community related to Pakistan’s human rights situation and the “crisis of impunity” are not going to stop any time soon. In July, the UN Human Rights Committee is scheduled to review Pakistan’s implementation of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights for the first time, and later this year, Pakistan is up for its third Universal Periodic Review before the Human Rights Council. And then there is also the assessment by the European Commission on Pakistan’s compliance with conditions of the GSP Plus trading status, an instrument of the EU’s trade policy that aims to encourage developing countries to comply with core international standards in return for trade incentives.
It is time Pakistan moves beyond lip service and starts taking concrete steps on implementing its obligations under human rights treaties.
The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists. reema.omer@icj.org Twitter: reema_omer
