‘EU leaders need to relook at GSP+ trade status for Pakistan’

New Delhi: The GSP+, or Generalised System of Preferences, of the European Union was designed as a means of linking trade preferences to specific commitments in the areas of human rights, labour rights, environmental protection, and good governance. However, Pakistan, while reaping rich economic gains from the system, has exploited to persecute minority communities and suppress human rights.

“The GSP+ regime, a European Union tool, created to promote human rights through trade, has been hijacked in Pakistan to cover up and tolerate abuses. Instead of strengthening religious freedom and democracy, it accompanies surveillance, silencing, and persecution of minorities. The irony is that a policy designed to serve human dignity is in practice acting as a silent accomplice to oppression," according to an article by Staikou Dimitra in Eurasia Review.

The article calls for EU leaders to take a fresh look at the GSP+ status of Pakistan as the country has violated all the principles embodied in the system. “EU leaders can either choose to take a stand for the principles they swore to protect, or risk being accomplices to a tragedy unfolding in Pakistan,” the article observes.

Despite the trade privileges hat Pakistan enjoys from its access to the European market, the government continues to allow attacks on religious communities such as the Ahmadiyya and Christians, and restrict freedom of expression through digital surveillance. Rather than translating into institutional progress, economic cooperation often serves as a safety net for the regime, the article states. Enforced disappearances, sometimes by state backed militias and in some cases by the state agencies themselves have left scars on vulnerable communities in Pakistan.