A world without rights
“I NEVER thought I’d work, but it’s better than having to go ask people for money,” one woman told reporters from The New York Times in the eastern city of…
Accountability and labor rights
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has apparently become more prudent in reviewing and disposing of low-profile pending cases in recent days. According to the organisation's officials, there was a realization…
One-party rule or civilian martial law?
The slugfest between the PTI government and the opposition, particularly the two largest opposition parties, the PML-N and PPP, is intensifying. The Sharif brothers are cooling their heels in jail…
The civil society’s concerns
Responding to the enormity of crises faced by state and society, leading civil society activists and mainstream and left-oriented activists and intellectuals have come up with an alternative progressive democratic…
Faith and civil society
In my previous article in these pages (July 8, 2019), I discussed the paradox of collective freedom in faith-based communities. The article led to a heated debate around the existential…
Human rights & mental health
A DECADE ago, world-renowned psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman termed the standard of mental healthcare across the world a ‘failure of humanity’. He noted that the worse deficiencies of…
Human rights agenda
THE first 100 days of a first-time government are often tumultuous, strewn with tactical errors and gaffes, and hindered by inexperience. The opposition morphs into the mythical Argus, ready to…
Human rights priorities
ON Monday, when the nations of the world celebrate the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Pakistan government too will be expected to…
Human rights obligations
IN addition to the domestic pressures for expeditious completion of its national human rights agenda, the state of Pakistan has to ensure that it keeps fulfilling on time the pledges…
Rightsizing
The tragedy of the commons is a term used in the social sciences to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own…
