The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report 'State of Human Rights 2013' launched on Thursday makes a shocking reading. We do know, through media and sometimes from personal experience, that as a people and a polity we are confronted with the challenge of abuse of rights. That we are so deeply contaminated with this curse, with not much of hope of early deliverance as the report tends to suggest, it's all the more disturbing, and therefore absolutely unacceptable. It's indeed a sad commentary on the working of the elected governments, both incumbent and its predecessor, in that during their tenures the rights situation in Pakistan worsened instead of registering any improvement. What had happened in Pakistan in 2013 is simply apocalyptic: on an average day 38 persons were murdered, two died in suicide bombing, nine die in violence in Karachi, two killed in police encounters, a mutilated body would be found every second day, and eight rape cases in Punjab alone. And also during the year under review, 687 persons were killed in 200 sectarian attacks, over 100 were killed in an attack on a church in Peshawar, 869 women were killed in the name of honour, more than 800 women committed suicide and 11 journalists were killed and many injured in the line of duty. And here were talking of figures which were either reported by the media or collected by the HRCP monitors. And reality on ground is far more grim and tragic given the inherent proneness of the underprivileged and vulnerable sections of our society to put up with injustice - the weak and unprotected won't go to police assuming it's of no avail and the rape victims would keep silent in deference to family prestige.

Broadly, there are two sets of human rights violations: the talking incidents that attract notice of the media and civil society and the silent saga of massive, unreported HR abuses, quite often put up with as the destiny. Millions of children cannot afford to go to schools; tens of thousands of cases remain undecided by courts, clean drinking water is not available to more than half of 185 million Pakistanis. There is this case of colossal failure on the part of the governments that are under constitutional obligation to make up for the deficiencies that tend to promote regression in the situation of human rights. The HRCP Secretary General I A Rehman is absolutely right in asserting that successive governments have worked on case-to-case basis to deal with human rights violations, eschewing an overall policy. Even the commission that was to be formed following the adoption of National Human Rights Commission Act 2012, has not come into existence yet. In fact, the government seems to be moving in the opposite direction - a case in point is the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance bill, already passed by the National Assembly without debate. The problem is not inadequacy of existing legal wherewithal to curb and control violence, the problem is with failure to implement the relevant law with required will and vigour for whatever reasons. The report indulges in serious discussion on various aspects of human rights situation in Pakistan, and makes some important suggestions the government need to look into and implement. The report has six sections: Rule of law; enforcement of law; fundamental freedoms; democratic development; rights of the disadvantaged; and social and economic rights. Not that the HRCP report on the ongoing year is unreserved condemnation of the existing narrative; it gives credit where it is due. For instance, it takes due notice of the fact that substantial backlog of passports was cleared by issuing 450,000 passports in 2013.

But one sparrow doesn't make a summer; there got to be tangible progress at least in some of the most areas like sectarian violence, mistreatment of minorities, honour killings and abysmal state of women rights. If the government can issue Economic Survey every year spelling out national economy-centred minuses and pluses of the outgoing year why not an annual socio-cultural survey detailing challenges and opportunities that were exploited, or lost, during the same period. The bitter truth is that while not much can be expected of a military government in the field of human rights our elected governments also relegate this vital input to a decent life to its political positions. That should change - the matters of human rights should top its agenda and rule of law should be its passion. Pakistan needs to improve upon its position in the World Freedom Index where it is now 159 out of 179 countries.