Political parties urged to make concrete pledges, honour them: CSJ.

LAHORE -- Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) organised a seminar on 'political parties' priorities and minorities' rights' that emphasized the need to make meaningful pledges and develop concrete plans to implement equality of rights and freedoms.The seminar was joined by representatives of political parties and civil society. Peter Jacob, Tanveer Jahan, Saroop Ijaz, Irfan Mufti, and Ajmal Jami presented the way forward to address human rights issues, while the representatives of political parties including (PTI) and Barrister Aamir Hassan (PPP) and Mahindar Paul (PTI) shared their respective party's policy and actions towards the protection of minorities' rights.

CSJ's report titled 'Promises to Keep and Miles to Go' based on the analysis of pledges, actions, and performance regarding minorities rights made by political parties was launched which revealed that none of the political parties was able to implement their pledges fully in the last three parliamentary tenures.The study found that Pakistan Tehreek: e: Insaf fulfilled none out of five promises made in election manifesto 2018, though it made partial progress on two promises. Pakistan Muslim League: N failed to materialize nine out of ten promises. Pakistan Peoples Party partially implemented one out of eight promises. The study showed that one: third of the pledges in parties manifestos throughout three election years i.e. 2008, 2013, 2018 were common including; minority representation in ETPB, establishing a statutory minority commission, criminalizing forced conversions, reviewing curriculum, implementing job quotas and reviewing discriminatory laws. However, the pledges remain unfulfilled.

The study revealed that the Punjab government during 2008 and 2022 introduced 11 policy actions followed by the federal government with 9 actions, Balochistan with 8, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with 7, and Sindh with 6 actions. The majority of policy actions lacked a strong legal basis and implementation mechanism which indicates a need for a serious reexamination of our administrative system. The policy actions rely heavily on issuing notifications, which is a convenient use of administrative powers while the government evidently faced difficulties in legislating and instituting rules of procedures in various measures. The concrete...