Journal of International Law & Human Rights

The Role of External Forces in Exacerbating Security Challenges and Undermining Development in Balochistan

Dr. Hafiz Najeeb Ullah, Dr. Adnan Mehr — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a qualitative study which looks at external factors as the main element that aggravates, maintain and re-organize the acts of terrorism in Balochistan. This study look at the ways that foreign actors are thought by actors to enhance the capacity and persistence of violent organizations. Interviews were conducted with 16 purposively and snowball selected participants from all over the province who are professionals in security, counter-terrorism, politics, governance, development, media and CPEC using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis revealed six interrelated external mechanisms: Financial and material facilitation, cross-border sanctuary and mobility, logistical and organizational support, strategic communication and propaganda, transnational and diaspora linkages and internationalization of violence in the shape of attacks on CPEC and other strategic interests. Participants talked not so much about a single visible relationship between the sponsors and the groups being called command, but rather about an architecture of involvement that makes it possible for armed groups to receive resources, build and sustain networks, retain mobility, spread narratives and restructure and replenish organizational capacities to continue violence even in the face of counter-terrorism pressure from within. In contrast, the social context or the political or socioeconomic issues that underlie these were rarely analyzed as the main focus of the study but rather as stories or as issues that leveraged by outside groups and militant organizations. The results also indicate that the external facilitation of terrorism has a detrimental impact on development, by heightening the security expenses, limiting mobility, making investors wary, disrupting project execution and internationalizing the danger associated with CPEC and Gawadar. The study argues that the only way to respond effectively will be through evidence-based attribution, disruption of external financing and facilitation, enhanced cross-border coordination, safeguarding strategic development corridors, resilient public communication and robust institutional capacity.

Singapore as a Model for Pakistan: Activity-Based Licensing and Technology-Risk Regulation: A comparative study of payment-services and fintech regulation

Muhammad Sohail Khurrshid — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Constitutional supremacy and international human rights accountability generate competing claims of legal authority, but their relationship cannot be resolved by assigning a single universal hierarchy to domestic and international law. This article develops a doctrinal account of reconciliation that separates domestic validity, international obligation, institutional competence, and remedial responsibility. It examines treaty law, constitutional provisions, selected judgments, and recent scholarship, with Pakistan as the principal jurisdiction and South Africa and Germany as functional comparators. Developments in European environmental rights litigation and the International Court of Justice's 2025 climate advisory opinion provide contemporary tests of the argument. The analysis identifies four recurring situations: compatible rights guarantees, incomplete domestic implementation, interpretive disagreement, and genuine normative conflict. These situations require different legal responses. Constitutional processes may determine how an obligation is implemented without supplying an international justification for its breach. Conversely, international responsibility does not automatically authorize domestic judges to disregard constitutional limits or treat every international statement as a binding judgment. The article proposes a sequential framework requiring verification of the applicable obligation, classification of the conflict, identification of a domestic legal pathway, rights consistent interpretation, institutionally appropriate reform, and continuing accountability. For Pakistan, the framework supports transparent treaty scrutiny, reasoned judicial engagement, legislative implementation, and coordinated federal and provincial follow up. It also accounts for the constitutional court structure introduced in 2025. Reconciliation is therefore understood as a disciplined allocation of responsibilities rather than an assumption that every conflict can be eliminated through interpretation. The proposed framework offers a basis for evaluating legal reasoning while leaving its practical effectiveness to subsequent empirical research.

Collateral Disruption Reconsidered: A Deep Machine Learning Framework for Modeling Third-Party Sanctions Spillovers, Trade Diversion Dynamics, and De-Risking Behavior in Pakistan's Cross-Border Banking Compliance Regime

Zia Ur Rehman, Dr. Muhammad Usman Malik, Dr. Zulfqar Khan — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose. Pakistan is not the target of any comprehensive sanctions programme, yet over two decades its banks, payment channels and trade routes have absorbed the costs of measures aimed at others, chiefly Iran and Russia, while three spells on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list and two US penalties on Pakistani banks raised compliance costs at home. This paper asks how large these third-party, or "collateral", disruptions are, through which channels they travel, and whether deep learning adds anything that conventional econometrics misses.

Design/methodology/approach. We build an annual dataset for 2005–2024 that combines World Bank macro-banking indicators, UN Comtrade bilateral trade with six partners, and an author-coded sanctions-compliance pressure index. A two-stage framework first identifies spillovers with bootstrap ARDL bounds tests, nonlinear ARDL, dynamic OLS, Jordà local projections, a Minnesota-prior Bayesian VAR with Diebold–Yilmaz connectedness, Hansen threshold regression, double/debiased machine learning and Toda–Yamamoto causality. It then trains LSTM, GRU, two-layer attention-LSTM and deep multilayer-perceptron networks, a deep ensemble and a denoising autoencoder, evaluates them out of sample with Diebold–Mariano tests and a model confidence set, and explains them with exact group-Shapley values.

Findings. Compliance pressure is associated with a persistent contraction of private credit: the dynamic-OLS long-run semi-elasticity is −25.3 percentage points of GDP per index unit, the bootstrap bounds test finds a levels relationship at the 10% level, and pressure Granger-causes credit but not the reverse. A one-standard-deviation pressure shock cuts reserves by about 0.7 months of imports on impact and lowers credit by up to 0.45 points of GDP after two years. Iran sanctions intensity shifts recorded trade away from Iran and towards UAE intermediation. Remittances follow a threshold regime: above a pressure index of about 0.46 they become sensitive to currency depreciation, consistent with leakage to informal channels. Deep models reduce forecast error by up to 22% relative to a prevailing-mean benchmark, but no gain is statistically significant in eleven annual hold-out years. Their value lies in attribution: sanctions channels account for 32–46% of the deep ensemble's explanatory mass, with Iran sanctions dominating trade diversion and US enforcement and the Russia regime dominating the 2022–2024 remittance shortfall.

Originality/value. The paper is the first to integrate a full small-sample econometric identification strategy with deep sequence models and exact Shapley attribution for a third-country sanctions spillover problem, and it reports, rather than conceals, the limits of deep learning on short macro samples.

The China Factor in the Kashmir-Maritime Nexus: India-Pakistan Rivalry and Indian Ocean Power Dynamics, 2013-2026

Tooba Aslam, Dr. Khurshid — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Kashmir dispute and competition in the Indian Ocean are frequently analyzed as separate territorial and maritime security problems. This article investigates how China’s strategic partnership with Pakistan, particularly through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), connects these theatres without presuming that connectivity automatically produces military power. Drawing on regional security complex theory, balance-of-threat theory, and geo-economics, it conducts a qualitative, documentary comparison of corridor politics, Gwadar Port, China-Pakistan naval cooperation, and the May 2025 India-Pakistan confrontation. The study examines official positions from India, Pakistan, and China against project-level disclosures, independently published maritime assessments, arms-transfer data, and recent scholarship. It finds three pathways of connection. First, CPEC’s passage through Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan transforms a connectivity initiative into a sovereignty dispute with consequences for India’s assessment of Chinese involvement. Second, bilateral defense transfers and exercises strengthen Pakistan’s maritime options while contributing to Indian perceptions of a coordinated continental-maritime challenge. Third, Gwadar offers contingent future logistical possibilities but remains materially different from a verified Chinese overseas naval base. Domestic political contestation, commercial underutilization, difficult terrain, and the broader Indo-Pacific competition constrain simple claims about an emergent China-Pakistan maritime bloc. The paper develops a differentiated account of the Kashmir-maritime nexus as a process of strategic interpretation and selective capability development, rather than an accomplished transformation of the regional balance. Its policy implications priorities crisis communications, transparency concerning port access, and locally legitimate connectivity.

Digital Surveillance and Right to Dignity A Case-Study of Pakistan in light of Constitution and Islamic Jurisprudence

Bushra Zeb Khan, Dr. Naseem Razi — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper explores the capacity of the constitutional and legal framework of Pakistan, together with the Islamic legal norms, to regulate the use of artificial intelligence-enabled digital surveillance and to safeguard the right to privacy and dignity as well as the fair trial rights. The paper uses case law-based approach to explore the legal reasoning of the superior courts in the cases of Shehla Zia v WAPDA (1994), Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto v President of Pakistan (1998), the concurring opinion of Syed Mansoor Ali Shah J in Qazi Faez Isa litigation, Ishtiaq Ahmed Mirza v Federation of Pakistan (2019), Islamabad High Court in Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (2022) and order of the Islamabad High Court (2024) on the Lawful Intercept Management System which was subsequently suspended by the Supreme Court. The legal reasoning in these cases is analyzed in the light of the constitutional provisions of Articles 4, 8, 9, 10A, 14, 19, 19A, 2A and 227 of the Constitution and the legal provisions of the Investigation for Fair Trial Act 2013, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 and relevant telecommunication laws. The paper also incorporates the Qur'anic and prophetic prohibition of spying and the maqasid al-shari'ah. The paper argues that the core principles for the limitation of the use of AI-enabled surveillance (legality, necessity, proportionality, independent authorization and effective remedy) exist in the law of Pakistan and these principles are in line with the Islamic requirements. The major problem is not the lack of standards but the implementation of these standards, limited scope of existing laws and the lack of any reported judgment on the use of artificial intelligence or algorithmic systems. Finally, the paper proposes a working framework for applying the existing judicial and Islamic tests on the use of AI-enabled surveillance.

Legal Analysis of Access to Justice in Bail Matters Under Section 497 CrPC: Challenges Faced by Indigent Persons and Socio-Economic Discrimination in Pre-Trial Detention in Pakistan

Mohsin Ali, Munir Hussain, Shehnaz — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The present research considers the problem of access to justice in bail cases under section 497 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898 (CrPC) and the connected provisions in section 498 to 500. It brings attention to the problems faced by poor people and the socio-economic discrimination that can be observed in pre-trial detention in Pakistan. The study looks into the role of financial difficulties in blocking release on bail of an accused person even in the case where the court has granted the bail, particularly where the bail bond or sureties are not available. The Methodology is Doctrinal Legal Research in which the Constitution of Pakistan (1973), Statutory provisions and Judiciary decisions have been studied. The study reveals that section 497CrPC is inextricably intertwined with sections 498 to 500 of the CrPC that deal with the bail bonds, sureties and release from custody. In this process, financial conditions set forth make it difficult for poor accused persons and result in their continued imprisonment on bail. This is a concern regarding the presumption of innocence as well as the fundamental rights granted by Articles 9, 10A and 25 of the Constitution, especially liberty, fair trial and equality before law. The study also contrasts section 338G(2) of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 which grants financial assistance to some convicted prisoners and the difficulties of awareness, accessibility and timely financial assistance under the Legal Aid and Justice Authority Act 2020. It highlights the barriers to access to competent legal representation due to poverty. The research concludes that access to bail should not be limited to the provision of a bail order and should be a matter of release. It suggests proportionate conditions for bail, taking into account an accused person's financial capacity, the effective access to legal aid, and the provision of suitable alternatives to the financial surety, so as to prevent poverty as a basis for continued pre-trial detention.

Anti-Suit and Anti-Arbitration Injunctions, A Comparative Analysis of Pakistan, India and U.K

Aftab Ahmad Rana — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article provides a comparative study of anti-suit and anti-arbitration injunctions in Pakistan, India and the UK. Anti-suit injunctions are equitable, in personam remedies that prevent parties from engaging in parallel proceedings in court in violation of an arbitration agreement, which protects arbitral jurisdiction. Under the Specific Relief Act, such remedies are regularly granted by U.K courts under Section 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981, while the Indian courts have adopted the Modi Entertainment test, the Pakistani courts are primarily based on the doctrine of inherent jurisdiction because of the statutory restrictions under the Specific Relief Act. On the other hand, anti-arbitration injunctions put a stop to the arbitral procedure. Pakistani courts have traditionally granted arbitral awards based on the traditional civil litigation principles of balance of convenience and irreparable loss, though the awards are controversial because they may undermine the autonomy of the arbitral process and the principles of Kompetenz-Kompetenz and separability. Under English and Indian law, however, such relief is only available in exceptional circumstances where an arbitration agreement is unenforceable, ineffective or a sham. The chapter also explores the growing jurisdiction of arbitral tribunals to grant injunctive relief under the rules of the arbitral institutions and under Article 17 of the UNCITRAL Model Law. Finally, it calls for the adoption of UNCITRAL standards in the statute and for judicial restraint in order to create an arbitration-friendly legal environment.