Conference of the birds

"Under the rubble of Gaza, the whole edifice of the United Nations' human rights mechanisms and the international human rights movement, led by the West, lies buried. It is about time that the South Asian intellectuals and rights activists who represent a region that constitutes a quarter of the world population, take others from the global South along, and completely decolonise and reset the human rights movement." This was stated by Roshmi Goswami, the leading South Asian public intellectual, author, researcher and human rights campaigner.

- BY HARRIS KHALIQUE

Recently in Lahore, after a gap of many years, an intellectually strong and highly charged group of academics, lawyers, writers, artists, journalists and human rights defenders from seven countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives — got together to deliberate on the current state of affairs and the way forward for the people in our region.

It was a hybrid conference titled 'Bridges, Not Boundaries', with representatives from four countries present in person. A significant number of speakers joined online due to their remote locations or their inability to travel, besides the current visa restrictions between India and Pakistan. Luckily, there were nominal technical glitches and those present in-person and online speakers and audiences stayed fully connected for two days. The conference was co-hosted by a regional alliance of organisations and individuals called South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) at the Dorab Patel Auditorium in HRCP’s own secretariat.