Project Overview
This project required RSIL to provide training to 100 students, lawyers, prosecutors and judges in the area of human rights and counter-terrorism legislation in 10 trainings spread over the duration of the project. In addition, the project also required us to develop two detailed reports on human rights and Pakistan’s legislative landscape and recommendations for improving the anti-terrorism court trial procedure in Pakistan. The overall objective was to improve the standards of due process and fair trial in the Anti-Terrorism Courts in Pakistan.
Videos
Date: January 2016 – July 2018
Team: Oves Anwar, Moghees Khan, Maira Sheikh, Zainab Mustafa, Minahil Khan, Sahar Haroon, Hafsa Durrani, Abdul Ghani
Project Partner:American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), Washington D.C.
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Report
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Training Sessions
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Judges Trained
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Lawyers Trained
Events/Trainings
Reports:
- Human Rights and Pakistan Counter-Terrorism Legislative Landscape
- Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights: A Review of Anti-Terrorism Court Trial Procedure in Pakistan
Outcomes
This project required RSIL to provide training to 100 students, lawyers, prosecutors and judges in the area of human rights and counter-terrorism legislation in 10 trainings spread over the duration of the project. In addition, the project also required us to develop two detailed reports on human rights and Pakistan’s legislative landscape and recommendations for improving the anti-terrorism court trial procedure in Pakistan. The overall objective was to improve the standards of due process and fair trial in the Anti-Terrorism Courts in Pakistan.
The project was highly successful in that RSIL exceeded all project outcomes and objectives. As part of its research activities, RSIL was able to develop two reports on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism in Pakistan. The first report focused on collating Pakistan’s extensive counter-terrorism legislative framework and then assessing human rights concerns that emanated from it. The second report delved specifically into Pakistan’s special Anti-Terrorism Courts (ATCs) and their performance. This report included a large number of implementable reforms to improve the overall trial process as well as protect the human rights of those facing trial.
RSIL’s capacity building activities under the project yielded exceptional results. While tasked with training 100 participants, RSIL went on to train over 400 individuals from all four provinces of Pakistan and Islamabad. This included 150+ judges from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh. Over 250 lawyers, prosecutors, law students and teachers from Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi were also trained in human rights and counter-terrorism in Pakistan. Importantly, 60 lawyers from all across Balochistan participated in the trainings. Participants in the trainings gave exceptionally positive feedback and a large percentage demonstrated improvement in their human rights and counter-terrorism legal knowledge.
RSIL also developed three short animated videos on the counter-terrorism legal framework in Pakistan and the principle challenges facing the system which were widely circulated on social media.
