Statement at the 53rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Adoption of the UPR report of Pakistan
Delivered by Gulalai Ismail
Thank you, Mr President.
Mr President, the Asia Legal Resource Centre, Aware Girls and CIVICUS welcome the government of Pakistan's engagement with the UPR process.
Since its last review, Pakistan has only partially implemented three of the fourteen recommendations relating to civic space. We welcome that Pakistan accepted twenty of the twenty-two recommendations on civic space it received during this cycle including to guarantee a safe and enabling environment for the work of journalists and human rights defenders; review the law for Electronic Crimes and ensure that it does not affect freedom of expression and end the extra-legal use of force as well as use of enforced disappearances.
Despite these commitments, space for civil society has continued to come under attack in recent years. We have documented barriers for CSOs to register and operate, the criminalisation of human rights defenders and journalists on fabricated charges. We are further alarmed by efforts to intimidate and censor journalists and media outlets, the criminalisation of online expression and restrictions and attacks on peaceful protests, especially by ethnic Pashtun minorities and women’s rights activists.
Mr President, our organisations call on the Government of Pakistan to take concrete steps to address these concerns, including by halting the use of anti-terrorism legislation to arrest, detain and prosecute activists, to drop all charges against human rights defenders Muhammad Ismail and release Idris Khattak and amend the 1960 Maintenance of Public Order law, to guarantee fully the right to the freedom of peaceful assembly.
We thank you.
Civic space in Pakistan is rated as "Repressed" by the CIVICUS Monitor.
