Senator Farhatullah Babar Thursday urged the political parties to agree upon a minimum charter of human rights in 2016 and form human rights cells to keep an eye on the human rights situation. He expressed these views during his address at a seminar on human rights in Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services in the federal capital organised by the Young Parliamentarians forum (YPF) on the human rights challenges and the way forward in this regard.
He said the political parties should agree to a minimum charter of human rights in 2016 just as the Charter of Democracy was agreed to, a decade back in 2006. He asked the political parties to form human rights cell to keep an eye on the human rights situation in the country, adding that Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has already set up such cells.
In order to advance human rights agendas nationwide, the political parties will have to reform themselves, he said and urged upon cross party young parliamentarians to join hands for this purpose.
To begin with, the national political charter should focus on, along with the right to life, liberty and security, four basic freedoms namely, freedom of expression, freedom of information, right to assembly and the right to association. Topped by the freedom of expression these freedoms are critical to citizens to record their concerns, voice their aspirations and offer alternatives to national issues, he said and lamented that these freedoms are under constant threat.
Behind the facade of loosely defined "national security interests" these rights have consistently been ignored and denied, he said and urged the political parties to work for balancing the national security interests with the public interests. The absence of democracy in political parties diminishes their ability to establish democratic governance that is crucial to upholding human rights, he said and urged to arrest the drift towards degeneration.
"Human rights are indivisible and have acquired global character beyond merely the affair of a state. Indeed human rights transcend national boundaries and prevail over the state and are irreversible," he added. He called upon the young MNAs to get passed from the National Assembly the anti-torture bill already passed unanimously by the Senate and transmitted to the National Assembly in January 2015 as a human rights gift to the nation. He also called for the implementation of the report of Senate committee to address the issue of enforced disappearances.
Farhatullah Babar also stressed upon the need for review of death penalty because of possibility of wrong convictions and its irreversibility and quoted the recent example of two convicts having been hanged even before their conviction had been set aside by the Supreme Court and ordered free. There are 27 offences that carry death penalty in Pakistan and asked whether Islam provides death penalty for 27 offences. "We should ensure that after the sunset clause, the military courts are disbanded. Ordinary criminals, instead of black jet terrorists as promised at the time, have also been hanged," he added. Regarding the missing persons, he called for ending the impunity with which some organisations still work and to bring the state agencies under the ambit of the law.
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