LAHORE: Amid the political, economic and climate crises enveloping Pakistan, a public meeting held by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has put forward civil society’s concerns and a draft charter of demands.
An immediate concern is the devastation caused by the ongoing floods that are a result not only of the climate crisis but also of the Pakistani state’s failure to carry out sustainable, pro-poor, pro-people development. Additionally, constant political confrontation continues to undermine democratic values at the expense of ordinary citizens’ needs, while decades of elite capture, hyper-securitisation and short-sighted economic planning have pushed daily-wage and fixed-income workers to the brink of survival.
Civil society demands that a national action plan be conceived and implemented jointly by the federal and provincial governments to rescue and provide relief to all those affected by the floods as well as to rehabilitate their lives and livelihoods. The role of local governments is key in this regard: they must be strengthened and given the technical and financial resources and autonomy needed to carry out relief work, climate change-resilient reconstruction and disaster preparedness. At the same time, the state must revise its policies towards civil society: the ousting of international NGOs has only worsened the current crisis.
Pakistan’s climate crisis is also political. Civil society demands that the state give all provinces a fair hearing and address the legitimate grievances of all ethnicities – in particular in Balochistan, Sindh, former FATA and the Seraiki waseb – if it expects to put forward a united front to counter the climate emergency. It is equally critical that women be represented equally across all institutional and government tiers. Once national elections take place, they must be held in a free and fair manner that ensures a representative government with the political will to protect the interests of the working classes and marginalized groups.
Speaking at the meeting, senior journalist Imtiaz Alam said that civil society must develop a charter of demands encompassing the protection of all fundamental rights. Human rights defender Tanveer Jehan said that disaster preparedness strategies should include mobile medical units and systems to trace families that had been divided by disasters.
Political economist Dr Fahd Ali said that the IMF deal should be renegotiated because Pakistan now needed the fiscal space to carry out rehabilitation and reconstruction. Defence expenditure, he added, as ‘the elephant in the room’, should be openly debated. Senior advocate Abid Saqi said that a meaningful political movement – involving labour, women and students was required to resolve the ongoing crises.
HRCP chairperson Hina Jilani said it was critical for civil society to work in unison against a growing political narrative that did not believe in rule-based order and that valued demagoguery and populism. She said that HRCP would use its convening power to bring together civil society onto one platform, but said it was also critical for civil society ‘to prove not only that it is relevant but also that it is indispensable’ in the current crisis.
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