Advancing children’s rights
Thirty-two years ago, on November 20, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This historic convention granted civil, political, economic, social and cultural…
Human rights 101
Whenever any discussions on human rights take place, some bureaucrats and securocrats don’t like it. To them, such discussions are superfluous and present Pakistan in a negative light. There appears…
Civil war: the Democratic infighting threatening Biden’s legacy
Eight months after Joe Biden swept to victory on a pledge to make America more livable, equitable and environmentally-friendly, a Democratic civil war is threatening to shred his domestic agenda.…
Facebook confronts human rights dilemma on political speech
Facebook Inc oversight board’s extension of former US President Donald Trump’s banishment from the social network failed to settle how it will balance political leaders’ freedom of speech and its…
Refugees’ rights
HISTORICALLY, global health crises have disproportionately impacted vulnerable groups in any population. Such groups, including women, children, and daily-wage workers, are often poorly positioned to utilise the resources the government…
Human rights focus
HUMAN rights may be back on the global agenda. In his first foreign policy speech as president, Joe Biden restored the US emphasis on human rights and diplomacy, referring to…
Human rights in 2020
We continued to feel intense suffocation in Pakistan throughout 2020. The state of human rights, which has consistently remained morbid for the past few years, definitely did not improve this…
NAB versus human rights
THAT the National Accountability Bureau has little respect for human rights is widely known. The extent to which human rights are violated by NAB can only be established by documentation,…
Sectarianism & civil society
NOTHING is more challenging for a state than maintaining social harmony during times of religious discord and hatred. The challenge becomes more uncertain when civil society and other stakeholders become…
Pakistan and the rights agenda
A few weeks ago, Pakistani diplomacy, known traditionally for punching above its weight, landed another historic win when Pakistan was elected to a fifth, three-year term at the UN Human…
