KARACHI:
International conception on human rights stems directly from John Lock’s philosophical ideas. Lock, as one may know, was a powerful libertarian ally. According to his conviction, humans have certain unalienable rights — natural rights that are granted to them by nature states. The state of nature has a law that govern its constituents. The law is intended to prevent human beings from harming one another. Life, liberty and property are thus unalienable rights of every single human being. Such unalienable rights are profoundly of one’s own and can’t be taken away by the force of law. It was these rights that Thomas Jefferson later drew on in the Declaration of Independence and Marquis De Lafayette in French Declaration of Man and of the Citizens. The rights, thereafter, became the basis for later declarations such as the UN Convention on Human Rights and various other covenants.
Over the past couple of decades, the world has witnessed an exponential increase in human rights abuses. Unlike the past, corporations today wield enormous power not just because of their assets but also because of their scope and scale of operations. Their operations have enormous impacts on human beings. These impacts may be violating their fundamental human rights. Therefore, growing instances of human rights abuses have urged states to take prompt action against those that are violating fundamental human rights and encourage them to respect those rights instead.
In this regard, different states have enacted mechanisms in conjunction with UNGPs. Pakistan, also, in the preceding weeks, through an ambitious five-year National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights, took a stride in that direction. Though the step is welcoming, the plan falls short on certain key areas.
First, the plan has not mentioned the respect for digital rights. Often under the garb of security concerns communication blockades are enforced on national days and in protest sites thereby curtailing the people’s rights to freedom of expression. Second, and this is the problem with virtually every state mechanism, a weak commitment towards grievance mechanisms. Though enterprises and states have made “grievance mechanism” available for “remedial recourses”, the enterprise’s high-handedness has effectively stymied the swift resolution of those grievances. International human rights laws and Pakistan’s plan need to be more lucid on the redressal of grievances and transnational human rights abuses of enterprises.
Muhammad Tayyab
Rawalpindi
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2021.
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