ISLAMABAD: In order to improve compliance of 27 UN conventions signed by Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has restructured the Treaty Implementation Cell (TIC), said Ashtar Ausaf, TIC convener and Attorney General of Pakistan.
On Friday, he was chairing the TIC meeting, attended by officials from federal ministries and provincial departments, International Labour Organisation (ILO) and eminent human rights advocates IA Rehman and Peter Jacobs. The meeting decided to device an effective monitoring and reporting mechanism on matters related to human, labour, children, minority rights, climate change, narcotics control and anti-corruption.
Addressing the meeting, Ashtar Ausaf said that the new TIC arrangement shall help Pakistan coordinate with departments concerned and agencies more efficiently and would provide a platform to partner with international associates working in the areas of human and labour rights to bring more clarity for efforts.
He informed the meeting that the European Union has lauded Pakistan’s efforts for establishing the TIC and has decided to replicate the same in other GSP+ beneficiary countries. “No democratic country and a representative government can claim that they have done enough for its own people so we have to keep doing more in every sense of the word,” he added.
While making a presentation, Omer Hameed, an economic minister at the Pakistan Embassy in Brussels, was of the view that the European Union has recently shared a List of Issues for which federal and provincial governments, international agencies and the civil society of Pakistan need to work together to device a monitoring and reporting mechanism.
Appreciating the government’s seriousness to establish institutions like TIC, IA Rehman was of the view that though provincial governments have enacted legislation on rights related matters, implementation and institutions building remains a challenging task. Peter Jacobs said that the TIC was a significant development on the course to fulfil international obligations, while issues like vertical and horizontal coordination also need to be addressed in order to ensure compliance.
