For all the flak the prime minister got for awarding appreciation certificates to the top ten ministries, it was heartening to see the Ministry of Human Rights (MOHR) in the list. In all fairness, Dr Shireen Mazari, the minister, understands the enormity of the task her ministry is assigned with and has her heart in the right place.

For his part, the prime minister could not have not rewarded the Ministry of Human Rights because that would have meant acknowledging defeat on so many counts. The ministry stands atop a structure whereby the government is obligated to protect human rights of people, including their right to life and liberty, education and health and the right to live with dignity; and providing them freedoms guaranteed under the constitution, including freedom from torture, freedom of expression and opinion, access to safe water, reasonable housing and so on.

The ministry’s responsibilities are, no doubt, gigantic. Its path is strewn with obstacles of various hues.

To begin with, the awards ceremony was followed rather closely by a horrific incident of mob lynching in Tulamba village, near Mian Channu in the Punjab, and two botched attempts where the police managed to avert lynching of blasphemy accused in Muzaffargarh and Faisalabad. These incidents happened merely two months after the incident in Sialkot that shook the entire country. Clearly, the big challenge for everyone that matters is to promote a human rights culture in the society.

Where does one begin?

The minister for human rights tweeted the statement of the chairperson of the Pakistan Ulema Council, Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, condemning the Tulamba incident. She must have felt the need for a religious leader to validate the government’s stance. Ironically, it is this parallel religious framework — in the form of Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Council of Islamic Ideology, the Pakistan Ulema Council, the Federal Shariat Court — that poses the biggest challenge to the work of the human rights ministry.

In a way, this statement as well as the tweet foreground the contradictions of the Pakistani state. This parallel religious structure prevents the setting up of a statutory minorities commission — a long-standing demand of the minorities that should ideally work under the MOHR and not the Ministry of Religious Affairs. This disallows some important discussions — or gives its own verdict — on issues like blasphemy laws, forced marriages, minimum age for marriage, economy or death penalty. Elected governments tend to cower under its pressure.

The human rights minister is aware of these difficulties, only a part of which stem from the Islamic framework and the ensuing jurisprudence that prevails in issues like blasphemy, for instance.

In January this year, she posted another tweet, pointing at the law on missing persons having gone missing, indicating that a law on enforced disappearances that was passed by the National Assembly had disappeared instead of being placed before the Senate. This is yet another contradiction of the state that stands at odds with the human rights agenda, which is as much about the indivisibility and universality of human rights as it is about democracy and rule of law. The government is compelled to bring an anti-torture bill but, given the impunity for a section of the state apparatus that no law will ever bring in its fold, any legislation sounds hollow and meaningless.

It is the responsibility of the state to put in place structures that protect people against human rights violations. The human rights ministry falls under the ambit of the government, where the emphasis remains on legislation which, of course, is crucial, but is equally focused on policies. In terms of laws, there have been notable successes like the Disability Act ICT, Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Act 2020, and the Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace Amendment Act 2022. Having said that, human rights must not be the concern of the federal government alone. These must flow down to the provincial and local tier.

Apart from the ministry, the state machinery envisages other mechanisms too, to cover the human rights excesses committed by the state or the government: these could be the standing committees of the parliament and independent national human rights institutions (NHRIs). The standing committees, because they cut across party lines, have their own value, but they also have limitations. It is the NHRIs that must act as a bridge between the citizenry and civil society on one side, and government and state machinery on the other. For that to happen, these institutions must first learn to look at themselves as autonomous institutions. Under the current political dispensation that has seemed like an unresolved problem.

One isn’t sure if human rights are still a ‘Western agenda’ for a majority of the population. The fact remains that many members of the parliament are not informed about the UN conventions that Pakistan has signed and ratified. That could be one task placed at the door of the ministry — to keep the parliament informed — in order for a more rights-driven local legislation. That in the absence of material incentives, most of these treaties and protocols become least important for the Pakistani state and government also remains a fact. Example: they are more pushed to grant labour, civil and political rights if that earns the country a GSP Plus status.

It is significant, therefore, that our governments are answerable to donors that understand the value of human rights. That does not make the task of MOHR any easier, for sure.

The writer is the director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a former editor of TNS