Institutionalizing human rights mechanism in SAARC countries
The time has come when SAARC as a regional organisation should get serious about human rights concerns being raised against South Asian countries by civil society organisations and international institutions and take some bold steps giving an end to such criticism and condemnation. The domestic redressal mechanisms which mostly consist of national human rights institutions and court of law seems to be not working in the right direction at least in more than half of the South Asian countries. Many countries irrespective of signing various international rights based treaties/conventions are not working towards its compliance or are rather very slow. In spite of being rebuked time and again by various international institutions in their periodic reports nothing exceptional has been achieved by any countries of South Asia. This utter situation of flux is helping no one and making things from bad to worse. In this entire episode the victims are the people of South Asia.
SAARC, which was conceived with a positive resonance to help the people of South Asia in achieving happiness and prosperity, in uplifting them from situation of gross haplessness and poverty, in spreading message of brotherhood and human consciousness, seems to be dying under its own weight of diplomacy. The concern seems to have shifted from ‘people’ to ‘political’. Political appeasement has become more important for any policy decisions to be taken at the regional level. The implementation is being kept on hold and sometimes strangulated only because of inter-country animosity and sense of wariness. Again in the whole episode the victims are people of South Asia.
Credit has to be given to those non-governmental organisations and public spirited citizens who are fighting day in and day out for the cause of securing human rights of people in South Asia. Some have gone ahead and raised legitimate demands for a strong human rights mechanism functioning in South Asia overseeing the whole process and acting as a mother institution. SAARC which has been bestowed with such solemn duty should start the process of conceptualisation of such a mechanism. Even the SAARC Social Charter speaks about reviewing the implementation of the charter obligations through agreed regional arrangements and mechanisms. If SAARC is to keep up its promises it should set up a strong human rights mechanism not just limiting itself to a toothless National Coordination Committee conceived under the Social Charter. If SAARC fails in this, the victims again will be people of South Asia.
SAARC Social Charter though drafted with a fine craft of mind resembles more like a politico-socio objectives to be achieved by a concerned government or at times a refined version of regional plan of action for South Asian countries. It can in no way be called a charter of rights dedicated to the people of South Asia and in no way comparable to the rights enshrined in the human rights charters of Africa, Europe or America who not only have clearly specified the rights guaranteed to their citizens but also adequately provided for their implementation. SAARC needs to negotiate, adopt and dedicate to its people a charter of human rights clearly indicating the rights guaranteed and specifying the duties of the government. If SAARC fails in achieving this objective, the cheated one will be the people of South Asia.
Having a charter of human rights will not be sufficient enough for guaranteeing human rights to the people but this has to be accompanied by a stronger enforcement mechanism in the form of a commission or regional human rights court whose decision should be recognised and considered as binding. Lessons can be taken from the human rights mechanisms existing in Europe, America and Africa in the form of European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights and African Court of Human Rights and Peoples Justice respectively. The European Human Rights Court has been empowered to find against the member states for violation of provisions of the charter. The American Commission of Human Rights is equally strong as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights possesses the power to visit sites of human rights violation and receive individual complains of such violation directly from the victim.
The future South Asian human rights mechanism can draw inspirations from such commission and establish a similar commission with powers as wide as being exercised by these commissions if establishing a regional human rights court for South Asia seems to be too early a decision to take. Such a mechanism in the form of a commission or a court will have other advantages, like acting as check and balance on national processes, promoting regional peace and security through promotion and protection of human rights, assisting national governments in the implementation of their international human rights obligations and most importantly offering people protection from human rights violations when national mechanisms fail. Today, all progressive regions of the world are moving in this direction, an example would be recently established ASEAN Inter-Governmental Human Rights Commission. The SAARC, before it gets too late, has to empower people with such rights if it really wants to sow the seeds of democracy, prosperity and human rights in the region and bring some justice to the people of South Asia.
The writer is lawyer at Jharkhand High Court, Jharkhand, India and is presently pursuing LLM from South Asian University, New Delhi.
