State Responsibility for Human Rights Violations by Non-State Actors in Pakistan under International Law

Abstract

The current paper discusses the ways in which Pakistan can take an international responsibility when non-state actors perpetrate human rights harms with a view to understanding the legal provisions of the state responsibility and international human rights law instead of considering the criminal culpability of those committing the crime. The main thesis is that the human rights treaties are not identified as primarily horizontal instruments under the duty to be followed by the private actors in the same manner as it is by the state, but rather as instruments that the international law turns to in order to evaluate the state adherence to the treaties by means of strong positive obligations to safeguard individuals within the territorial jurisdiction of the state against predictable and avoidable injuries inflicted by the private actors, armed organizations, societal groups, and corporate entities. An international wrongful act according to the general law of state responsibility includes: (i) that the conduct is attributable to the state and (ii) that the conduct violates an international obligation; the conduct of a state can be attributable not just through state organs but also where the conduct is carried out on behalf of the state, or under the direction of the state, or control of the state, or where the state accepts the conduct as its own. Under human rights law, responsibility can also be initiated by omission: when the state condones massacre in the hands of the private, when it fails to use due diligence or take proper preventive, investigative, punitive and reparative measures. These interpretations of the Human Rights Committee of article 2 of the ICCPR are particularly significant to Pakistan: it helps understand that the Covenant does not directly have a horizontal effect as a matter of international law, though the positive duties of the state exist only in full discharge when individuals are not only not put under the protection of state actors, but also not subjected to atmospheric attacks, sectarian attacks, intimidation of justice institutions, abuses by non-state security professionals, and violence by non-state military force, especially where practices of impunity, laxity in enforcement, or discriminatory The analysis will be based on the findings of treaty bodies on Pakistan, especially the Human Rights Committee and CERD, in which the current areas of legal risks will be observed and suggestions of reforms will be recommended to bring counterterrorism, public order, and governance to the corner of non-derogable and core human rights obligations.