Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan: Strengthening Legal Mechanisms and Victim Redress

Abstract

In Pakistan, enforced disappearances continue to pose a typical human rights problem, especially in areas where there is conflict or political turmoil. Although international laws recognize such practices as barbaric, national impunity and redressed systems have in most events failed to stop the long suffering of victims and impunity of their victimizers. This research work seeks to assess the efficiency of the current legal frameworks in Pakistan on the enforced disappearance and suggest evidence-based improvement with regard to the mechanism of redressing the victim. It tries to fill in the crevice between legislative works and practical application and points out at systemic shortcomings. The use of mixed methods when the quantitative approach predominates helps to collect data in the form of official government documents, human rights groups, and case laws files over the period from 2005 to 2024. The identification of the trends in reported cases, prosecution rates, and outcomes of the redress of the victims is carried out with the help of statistical methods such as regression analysis and time-series modeling. Further, cross-tabulation and hypothesis testing are used to determine the effects of legislative corrections on the rate of occurrence and settling of cases. Initial statistical data modeling shows that the number of reported cases has tremendously gone up after 2010, whereas the number of successful prosecutions has increased significantly. The legal changes that have been made over the past ten years bare little relation to the better outcomes of the victims. Moreover, the research unveils the geographic and demographic differences in terms of handling cases which implies the gaps and inefficiency of the system in judicial actions. The results indicate the necessity to strengthen institutional responsibility, make investigation practices more effective, and increase the legal rights of the victims and their relatives. As a solution, a data-driven policy structure is suggested, which will make the legal response in Pakistan consistent with international human rights and integrate sustainable justice and transparency processes