New Delhi: At least one of the options that were available for Pakistan to raise Kashmir at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has closed after Islamabad failed to submit a draft resolution before the scheduled deadline in Geneva.
After missing the deadline, Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal claimed that the “human rights situation in the IOJ&K has become the central issue of focus at the Human Rights Council”. IOJ&K or the so-called “Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir” is Pakistan’s preferred terminology for Jammu and Kashmir.
He also stated that Pakistan “has initiated a number of processes to keep a sustained focus on IOJ&K”. Faisal added that Pakistan will “exercise all options available to ensure that [the] HRC actions to meaningfully impact on the ground situation” in Kashmir.
However, he did not directly refer to the failure to submit a draft resolution to the human rights council.
After the UN Security Council discussed Kashmir in a closed-door but off-the-record meeting last month, Islamabad fielded a heavy-weight delegation for the council’s 42nd regular session. For the first couple of days, Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was in Geneva to lead the front, along with former foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua who was designated as the PM’s special envoy.
Pakistan has launched a major diplomatic drive to convince the international community to censure India for its move to rescind Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and bifurcate the state into two Union Territories.
Meanwhile, India also sent a high-level diplomatic delegation to shore up India’s Permanent Mission. The Indian high commissioner Ajay Bisaria, who had to leave Islamabad after Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with India, has been camped in Geneva for over three weeks.
Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi addresses the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
After verbal sniping, action moves backstage
For the first two days of the session, there was constant verbal sniping between Indian and Pakistani delegations. Thereafter, the action largely shifted behind the scenes, as Pakistan attempted to rally the numbers, while India made all efforts to thwart them.
Pakistan realistically had only two options available. It could submit a draft resolution criticising India’s restriction in Kashmir and change in constitutional status – or call for a debate at the council.
To submit a resolution, Pakistan required at least 15 backers. But, since it failed to circulate a text to the UNHRC Secretariat by the deadline of 1 pm on September 19, it was clear that they could not find the requisite numbers. This was despite over a dozen members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), being members of the council.
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The other route for Pakistan is to suggest the situation in Kashmir as a topic debate in the council. Broaching a topic does not require backers nor is there any time limit on when the proposal can be floated before the current session ends on September 27.
However, if Pakistan does call for a discussion on Kashmir, India will immediately ask for a procedural vote to check from members if this topic should be debated. Since Pakistan doesn’t seem to have the numbers, Indian officials are confident that Islamabad won’t go down this path. “Pakistan still doesn’t have the numbers. We don’t think that they want to be publicly defeated,” said an Indian official.
A precedent in 1994
The last time India and Pakistan had invested so much diplomatic capital in Geneva was in 1994. In the backdrop of the infamous Rubaiya Saeed kidnapping and the Hazratbal siege, Pakistan submitted a resolution on the human rights situation in Kashmir to the UNHRC’s predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, in February 1994.
In his book on India-Pakistan relations, former ambassador T.C.A. Raghavan recounts how both sides fielded their top negotiators. Then Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto visited Geneva. India’s delegation, led by the leader of opposition Atal Bihari Vajpayee, comprised of the minister of state for external affairs Salman Khurshid and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah.
“This was a show of symbolic and real bipartisanship. It was a politically astute move by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao but also showed how high the stakes were,” wrote Raghavan in The People Next Door: The Curious History of Indian-Pakistan Relations.
Farooq Abdullah was detained just before the Indian government took the step to introduce a Bill in parliament to dilute provisions of Article 370 on August 5. The government recently announced that he has been charged under the Public Safety Act.
Pakistan eventually withdrew its resolution, but it was a close call. “The number of votes in favour of Pakistan’s draft resolution was always going to be small; our reckoning was that ours would be somewhat higher—something like 7 for us and 4 for Pakistan, with all the rest, constituting the vast majority of members, abstaining,” wrote former foreign secretary Krishnan Srinivasan in his 2012 book Diplomatic Channels.
Similarly, 25 years later, Indian diplomats were concerned that in case Pakistan did submit a resolution, the key job would have been to reduce the number of abstentions among the 47 members of the Council. With Pakistan not submitting any resolution, the vigil will now be on a possible call for debate.