Pakistan Reforms & Resolution Summit

The Federal Shariat Court is a higher court established in 1980, which enjoys the appellate and revisional jurisdictions in cases concerning Hudood laws, and is conferred with original jurisdiction to examine the validity of any law on the touchstone of the ‘injunctions of Islam’. When the FSC finds that a legislation or one of its sections violates Islamic edicts, the Court orders the functional government to amend the law within a specified period of time. The law or its provision is regarded as being eliminated from the statute once the specified term has passed if it is not modified or if an appeal against the FSC's ruling is not filed with the Supreme Court's Shariat Appellate Bench.

Registration of fake FIRs have been used extensively to victimize the opponents. To curb this, in 2018, the Supreme Court issued instructions to the police not to arrest a person for having been declared as the accused in an First Information Report (FIR). The Police can only proceed in the criminal procedure once they have sufficient evidence about the accused person’s involvement in a crime. The Section 182 of the Pakistan Penal Code provides for a maximum penalty of six months in prison or fine or both in case a person deliberately has a false case registered.

The occupation of Palestine closely followed the independence of Pakistan from the British Raj. Ever since, Pakistan has fully supported the proposal of the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Due to Pakistan's pro-Palestinian stance, bilateral relations between Pakistan and Israel have continuously wavered. From the denouncement of Israel as an 'illegitimate state' by Quaid e Azam to passing of resolutions to call upon international bodies to call Israel over human rights crimes, Pakistan has maintained its stance on not recognizing the state of Israel until the "liberation of Palestine".

The Supreme Court reserves the power to take Suo Moto cognizance of a matter which involves or violates the fundamental rights of the citizens. Article 184 (3) grants the Supreme Court the power to take up cases under the umbrella of 'public interest litigation' (PIL) and assume the role of a benevolent guardian to conduct fact-finding missions and inquisitorially pass general orders for all stakeholders. The article stipulates that for the court to have original jurisdiction on an issue, it first needs to be of public importance and must involve a violation of the fundamental rights enshrined within the first chapter of the second part of the state's constitution.

The onset of the cold war coincided with the division of British India into the two independent states of India and Pakistan. In the burgeoning bilateral international order, the newly independent nation-states had to decide which of the two superpowers (the United States and the USSR) to form an alliance. Being the weaker, more vulnerable, and economically less developed of the two states, Pakistan joined the us-led military alliances that persisted until the end of the cold war. Furthermore, in February 1955, Pakistan became a member of the Southeast Asia treaty organization (SEATO), also called the Manila Pact, which was designed to be a regional NATO that would block communist advances in Southeast Asia.

In 2018, to limit the acquittal of accused in honour killings, the Additional IG Punjab, Investigation Branch Abu Bakr Khuda Bakhsh directed the Punjab Police to include Section 311 of the Pakistan Penal Code in the cases of honour killings. Section 311 of the PPC, which relates to “Tazir after waiver or compounding of the right of Qisas in Qatl-e-Amd”, specifies that the state becomes a party in cases where blood relatives pardon the murderers.

The first police act in the Indian subcontinent was commissioned and operationalized by Charles Napier for Sindh in 1843. The act aimed to control the masses instead of curbing the injustices, which is why the more progressive and developed provinces of India refused to adopt this model. Ironically, the Police act 1861, currently implemented in Pakistan, is majorly based on Napier's policing model.

Pakistan's judicial system directly stems from a system that was used in British India, and the Government of India Act 1935 was retained as the provisional constitution for the newly formed state. As a result, the legal and judicial system of the British system continued in the new state with due adaptations and modifications.