The policy framework to deal with civil society organizations must be rooted in legislation and not by security agencies accused of human rights violations and excesses against citizens, he said. It must find a place in the annals of world that the fate of NGOs working for the recovery of missing persons is in the hands of those very agencies accused of having involvement in enforced disappearances and also are not accountable, he said.
He said that previously the Economic Affairs Division used to deal with the registration of INGOs. But now the Interior Ministry deals with it through a committee that also included the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). As a result more than half of the over 100 INGOs that had applied for registration were disallowed to operate in the country, he said quoting from a reply to a question recently asked in the Senate. "We need to have appropriate legislation for the smooth working of NGOs and at the same time there is need for legislation to regulate the working of the state agencies," he said.
Babar said that Pakistan is a signatory to international conventions on civil society organizations and warned that not implementation of the promises made will result in serious embarrassment at the time of GSP plus review. "Ideology and the undefined national security interest are increasingly employed to silence the voice of civil society organizations from expressing alternate ideas and opinions and dissent," he said.
Meanwhile, a girl who was allegedly paraded naked in Dera Ismail Khan in October last year appeared before the committee where she recounted the distressing details of the abuse she had suffered. The 16-year-old girl told the committee members that she had been humiliated and a video was also recorded after she was stripped.
The members of the committee noted with concern that the prime suspect in the case, Sajawal, is still on the run. Police officials informed the committee that the statements of seven suspects arrested in the case have been recorded and the weapons used in the incident have also been recovered. They assured the committee that the culprits in the case would be punished.
Talking about recent Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights record in Geneva, Senator Farhatullah Babar said that at the previous review five years ago Pakistan had agreed to a number of recommendations to criminalize enforced disappearances and deplored that no steps have been taken. Similarly the claim in the national report that blasphemy laws are non-discriminatory and that no one has been punished under it is not correct.
"It will do us no disservice if we admit that the fair and just implementation of blasphemy law presents challenges that the state is trying to address," he said. He said that the promise of reviewing the number of laws that carry death penalty has also not been kept as today there are as many as 27 crimes that carry death penalty.