Asma Jahangir was ‘voice of sanity and compassion’

Speakers recall HRCP co-founder’s empathy on her second death anniversary

ISLAMABAD: Late human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was a ‘voice of sanity and compassion’.

This was stated by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Honorary Spokesperson and a close associate of Jahangir, IA Rehman on Monday while delivering the first Asma Jahangir Memorial Lecture.

The lecture was organised by the HRCP in Islamabad on Tuesday.

Rehman remembered Asma’s empathy with the vulnerable and the disadvantaged.

Heart of gold: The Asma Jahangir few knew

He spoke about the public’s fundamental right to 'economic justice'. Citing examples ranging from bonded labourers and small farmers to lady health workers and journalists, he said that people’s economic rights – the 'right to employment, and just and equitable conditions of work' – should not be subject to excuses such as 'availability of resources'. Noting that the Constitution protects a citizen’s social and economic wellbeing, Rehman said that it was critical to secure the ‘substance’ of these rights, their ‘availability to all citizens’ and their ‘incremental expansion’.

“All citizens of Pakistan have a right to economic justice, and Asma would not have stood quietly by in such a situation,” Rehman said.

“It fell to all of us,” he said, “to band together and demand that these rights – and all other fundamental rights – be protected and promoted.”

HRCP Secretary-General Harris Khalique announced that the commission was instituting the Asma Jahangir Award for Human Rights Defenders, and resuming the Nisar Osmani Award for Courage in Journalism and the IA Rehman Research Grant in Human Rights. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2020.