A High Level Experts Meeting on Human Security has recommended to take possible preventive measures to counter radicalization in the country besides educating people about state laws, constitutional rights and international human rights. The meeting also emphasized that the state institutions should be sensitized to provide constitutional rights to various ethnic groups, minorities, labour,and workers.
The meeting organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute, (SDPI) here on Wednesday at Marriot Hotel Islamabad, aimed to recap the state of human security in Pakistan and to gather expert opinion on human security research needs. Representative of Government of Pakistan, UN agencies, human rights bodies, lawyers, academics, researchers, and journalists also attended the meeting.
In his welcome remarks, Dr. Abid Qayium Suleri, the SDPI Executive Director, said that being a think tank, SDPI’s major role is to engage with the civil society, and policy-makers so as to facilitate them to produce results that allow both people and governments to act responsibly. "SDPI takes human security as a paradigm that serves as a means to bring governance stability and allows preservation of people’s well-being and rights regardless of difficult circumstances that may be caused by man-made disasters or natural disasters", he stressed.
Ambassador Sahaqat Kakakhel, the Chairman Board of Governors, SDPI, emphasized the importance of action based research and institutional commitment to understand the issues facing the bottlenecks in the way of peace and security. He said that human security has to be ensured through greater collaboration between all stakeholders, including the state – and the society. He observed that both state and society has to work in collaboration with one and another in order to ensure progress of Human Security in Pakistan
Dr. Maleeha Aslam, the Head of Gender and Human Security Division, SDPI, emphasized the importance of achieving the overall security objective through both state security and human security however, state security concerns must not compromise human security that could prove to be counterproductive. "UNDP's definition of human security remain by far the most authoritative and widely cited and along with it the concept has been defined elaborately in academia, wider civil society, and even by governments such as Japan, Canada and Norway" said Dr. Aslam.
Rabia Khattak, the Deputy Country Representative, UNDP, opined that radicalization is a pervasive and rampant issue in Pakistan. However, weak governance, disruptive economic, socio-political structures and lack of education has contributed a lot towards radicalization. That's why, radicalism or extremism has resulted in thousands of deaths due to suicide attacks, sectarian violence and target killings in the past decade.
Ehsan Mehmood Khan, Author of Human Security in Pakistan discussed about his book based on three subsets – women, children and educational security in the case of Pakistan. Talking about the personal security in Pakistan he shared that 50k fatalities and 20k violent acts has happened in Pakistan. Since 2003, 3200 people has been killed in around 400 drone attacks. He also shared the shocking digit of journalist fatalities in Pakistan from 1994 – 2014 i.e. 78.
Among those present were Nisar Memon, Khawar Mumtaz, Dr. Masuma Hasan, Zia Awan, Karamat Ali, Simi Raheal, Yasmeen Zaidi, Kausar Khan, Zahid Hussain, Dr. Najma Najam, and Shafqat Munir.
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