Geneva: Braving the chill, former chief justice of India P.N. Bhagwati spends several weeks every year in Geneva to work with the UN Human Rights Committee. Bhagwati, now 81, is part of the 18-member committee of independent experts set up in 1976 under the principal human rights treaty, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to monitor its implementation. The committee considers the compliance reports submitted every five years by each of the 149 “state parties” to the treaty. More importantly, at special closed-door meetings, it also inquires into complaints received from individuals alleging violations of the treaty.But Bhagwati and his colleagues are yet to deal with any complaint concerning India. Reason: the complaint mechanism has been created by what is known as “the optional protocol” to the main treaty and that applies only to the state parties that have ratified it separately. Though 104 out of 149 state parties have opted for the protocol, India has chosen to evade the complaint mechanism.So, when most countries have made themselves accountable for their actions related to civil and political rights, why has India, the world’s largest democracy, not done the same? It is not as if there is any particular ideological, economic or geographic pattern to the countries that have ratified the optional protocol. The state parties to the optional protocol include countries from all regions, rich and poor nations, real and fake democracies. But our army-controlled neighbour Pakistan could not exercise that option because it is anyway not party to the main treaty.India is, of course, not the only country to have skirted the optional protocol despite ratifying the main treaty. It is in the distinguished company of the two most advanced democracies, the US and the UK. But that is only as far as the optional protocol related to civil and political rights is concerned. The US and the UK have at least signed some of the other optional protocols pertaining to human rights. Out of the five optional protocols that are there, the UK is party to one aimed at abolishing the death penalty and has signed, though not yet ratified, two dealing with the rights of the child. The US ratified two protocols concerning the rights of the child only four months ago.India, on the other hand, is yet to sign, let alone ratify, a single optional protocol. Out of the UN’s strength of 190 members, India shares this dubious record with only 43 and those are mostly countries you will find it challenging to locate on the globe: Cook Islands, Eritrea, Kiribati, Micronesia, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Not exactly the kind of company that would enhance India’s standing in the international community.For all its liberal pretensions, India is clearly out of step with civilised countries in its opposition to optional protocols. Why, even in our own neighbourhood, Nepal forged ahead of us by going on board all the five optional protocols, Bangladesh by ratifying three and Pakistan by signing two. No matter what the state of human rights in a given country, the trend everywhere is in favour of optional protocols because it is, let’s face it, good public relations. The country concerned can derive mileage, moral and economic, for submitting itself to a global human rights order. More and more countries seem to feel that this benefit offsets the risk it takes by letting a UN body adjudicate human rights complaints. It is becoming passe for states to allege that the complaint mechanism is intrusive or inconsistent with their sovereignty. To their credit, some countries have responded constructively to the decisions handed to them by amending laws or releasing prisoners or compensating victims.South Block is damaging India’s image by adopting an excessively defensive policy on optional protocols. It gets away with it because so few in the country have access to what our diplomats do or face on international fora like the ongoing annual session in Geneva of the UN Commission on Human Rights. A realist may be justified in arguing that the protocol on civil and political rights may prove embarrassing because of Kashmir. Similarly, one may contend that India cannot be party to the protocol on the death penalty till it decides, like the EU countries, to scrap the provision from the statute. But what sense does it make for India to boycott the protocol on “the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women”? What signal is India giving by avoiding the protocol on “the involvement of children in armed conflict” when even its worst critics do not accuse it of engaging child soldiers? Why should India have any misgivings about the protocol on “the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography?”Conscious as they are, South Block’s omissions regarding women and children make one wonder if the Indian system is actually worse than one thinks it is.
