It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of
Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting
and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so
as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the
state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world
as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent.
Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as
citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have
also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has
meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many
dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather
simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be
an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.
The golden jubilee of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) coincides with the emergence of Asia as a centre of global attention. However, greater attention to Asia has been accompanied by some scepticism over its attitude towards human rights. The chapter provides an overall assessment of the impact of the ICCPR on the major Asian States, with an analysis of the factors affecting such influence. The chapter considers the involvement in, observance of, and compliance with the provisions of the ICCPR by these States. It further delves into the academic and judicial discourse on the ICCPR within these States, recording the domestic disposition towards judgments of foreign courts, the output of the Human Rights Committee, and the work of other international human rights bodies. It makes suggestions for developing mechanisms to improve the effectiveness of the ICCPR and for creating databases to perform further research in the area.
