By Arshad Mahmood Awan

A person’s dignity has been the most cherished human value since the evolution of collective life. Almost all civilizations celebrated it with a legal characterization of their own. Collaboration of human values, including the fundamental importance of dignity, developed a collective conscience to enforce standardized human values cum rights. The social contracts of the societies extended while corroborating human rights as a principal propelling factor.
A community’s communal and social life is directly dependent upon the qualitative incorporation of human rights. The legal regimes of human rights remained domestic until the formulation of an international platform, namely the United Nations, that internationalized a common platform for human rights.

World war II brought the world’s nations together for peace, human rights and collective benefit. The world leaders assumed that the negation of fundamental rights was the primary reason for the war. UN charter on human rights, agreed in 1945, paved the way for the allied countries to corroborate the international standardized human rights to the cannon of domestic legal regimes. The agreed covenant led to the forming of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The envoys adopted as many as 30 human rights; this declaration is called the Magna Carta of international stature. The covenants of 1966, namely ICCPR and PCCSPR, further elaborated on the human rights mechanism.

Significantly, ZA Bhutto, the then foreign minister of Pakistan, participated in the collaborative process of the 1966 covenants. It inspired his vision regarding human rights, and eventually, he translated it into the constitution of 1973. The covenants of the United Nations greatly encouraged the fundamental rights guaranteed in the constitution of Pakistan promulgated in 1973. The charter of the United Nations inspired nations to uphold the cannons of human rights. Interestingly, the United Kingdom enacted an exclusive human rights act in 1996 to implement the scheme of human rights because it does not have a written constitution. Hence, it is the remarkable constitutional success of the constitution of Pakistan to incorporate well-acclaimed human rights.

Enforcement of fundamental rights has been a challenge in Pakistan throughout history. Article 199 of the constitution of Pakistan provides judicial access to enforce these rights. However, it is administrative law that is a critical factor in enforcement. Assumably, there is a judicial choke in enforcing the fundamental rights under article 199 of the constitution because administrative offices are not performing. Subsequently, the judiciary has to take the burden of the litigation. Judicial review, all over the world, is the most challenging way to implement human rights. Their enforcement is directly dependent upon the performance of administrative offices, which are the fastest enforcement mode in design. Administrative organizations are required to develop swift deliverables to attain better performance in achieving human rights.

Article 8 of the constitution is the crux of our law dispensation. It explicitly provides that any law inconsistent with the fundamental rights provisions shall be void. Hence, the article is the torch bearer for law making. Notably, the constitutions of 1956 and 1962 did not provide the constitutional guarantee of fundamental human rights, unlike that of 1973. It is now a constitutional obligation to align all the law regimes following fundamental rights.

Pakistan got liberation from the colonial shackles that aimed at exploiting the local economic and human resources. It required a constitutional transition from a colony dispensation to an independent state. Colonialism imparted a state-subject relationship; thus, enforcing fundamental rights was out of the question. Independent Pakistan was to develop a state-citizens relationship, and it took us 26 years to finally provide a constitutional guarantee to fundamental human rights. Therefore, governments should have reorganized all coded laws following fundamental rights. This process of recording the law is a critical requirement towards achieving the goals of fundamental rights.

Existing coded laws primarily enforced before the promulgation of the 1973 constitution require overhauling to the extent of constitutionalizing it. It is a rigorous process for the legislature and executive, and without recognizing it, the quality of the law shall remain questionable.
Administrative reforms are directly dependent on a proficient system of delivery and performance. Like all other colonially inherited inheritance, the organizational structures in Pakistan are colonial reminiscent. Consequently, their re-organization and reformation to the obligations of the constitution and performance modes are key achievable. Article 37 (i) provides that the state shall decentralize the governing administration to facilitate expeditious disposal of its business to meet the convenience and requirements of the public. In a federation, decentralization is a critical performance mode. We need to build institutions on devolution, especially local governance, to provide the proficiency to the administration to achieve human rights objectives.
Finally, establishing delivery-oriented administrative organizations is key to attaining the objectives of fundamental rights. Our delivery of basic rights shall be better when there is a decrease in judicial access to fundamental rights under article 199. Therefore, it is compulsory to build the administrative institutions of the country.

The critical problem in the non-implementation of human rights is Pakistan’s absence of the rule of law. It is the primary obstacle to achieving Pakistan’s human rights objectives. The state and society need to work hard to obtain this noble objective. Elite culture and deeply rooted dimensions of power are the primary hinderance to achieving the rule of law. Then, the absence of the rule of law creates severe human rights abuses and denials.

Last but not least, the awareness about fundamental rights creates a desire in an individual to attain them. In this regard, the incorporation of fundamental rights in the curriculum of students may be a step forward in the right direction. Primarily, societies develop a human code to practice fundamental rights without intervention by the state. However, the community of Pakistan is still growing for the cause of human rights. Therefore, the intervention by the government, along with all social and religious institutions, is indispensable. This intervention and cooperation will be instrumental in the protection of fundamental rights. Human rights are the gift of nature to humans. They manifest human values and inclinations. Therefore, it is a moral obligation of an individual and collective society to further the cause of implementing human rights.

The Writer is an educationist.