'Government upbeat about retaining GSP Plus status for next 8 years'

The government is upbeat about retaining GSP Plus status for next eight years as challenges in implementation of 27 International UN Conventions on human rights, labour rights, and environment have almost been overcome. An official told Business Recorder on Friday that European Union expressed its reservations last year over violation of human rights, especially following attacks on minorities and their places of worship in different parts of the country.
"The National Commission for Human Rights has been established at the federal level while all four provinces have taken effective measures to ensure labour rights and curb environment issues," he said. The official said Pakistan submitted its country reports to the relevant UN bodies on all the conventions in November 2015 and "they were satisfied with the progress." In addition, human rights cells had also been set up at high courts throughout the country, he said.
The European Union granted GSP Plus status to Pakistan effective January 1, 2014. It was expected that as a result of grant of the GSP Plus, there will be an increase in exports of $1.5 billion to the EU States in one year though this target remains unmet due to other reasons.
Treaty Implementation Cell, headed by the special assistant to prime minister on law and justice at the federal and provincial levels, had been looking into all the issues related to all the UN conventions, he said. He said that co-ordination between the federal government and the provinces had also improved over time and they had been sending periodic reports to the federal government too.
The official said the Sindh government was also bringing a uniform policy in that regard to merge all the sectors including health and safety for labour. Further, International Labour Organisation was expected to start training programmes for Pakistani Inspectors in that regard, the official added.
The GSP-Plus is conditional to ratification and compliance with 27 international standards and covenants on labour, human and women rights, environment, narcotics and corruption. These 27 standards comprise eight ILO core labour conventions, six UN conventions on human rights, and gender and racial discrimination, nine UN protocols on environment and four UN conventions on narcotics and corruption. The official said there were no issues related to the ratification of the conventions and problems at implementation stages had also been sorted out. The federal and provincial governments have undertaken various legislative and institutional measures to ensure effective implementation of these conventions in the light of the international commitments as well as principles enshrined in Pakistan's constitution.
"The European Commission will present a detailed technical report based on the trade data and progress on all the conventions to the European Parliament by the end of this year," he said. "If all these members are satisfied with Pakistan's progress on human rights, labour rights and environment issues, then it is expected the GSP Plus status for the country would be extended to 2024," he said.