Tolerance

As the Mutual Evaluation advances, the choices Sri Lanka makes will shape both its international financial standing and the health of its democratic space.

Rights groups continue to press for transparent investigations, reconstruction where warranted, and stronger safeguards so that historic places of worship are not erased regardless of the current demographic composition of surrounding communities.

The Committee’s report underscores a broader pattern in which exceptional measures and administrative practices risk normalising discrimination rather than eliminating it.

The 2026 Commemoration demonstrated that digital platforms, when deliberately shaped around shared heritage rather than division, can become spaces of genuine encounter.

In Balochistan the pressures are layered: state agencies, political and tribal elites, and non-state armed groups – all exert influence.

Civil society groups and Sufi organisations have urged the government to treat shrine attacks as a national security issue rather than isolated law-and-order problems.

The path forward requires governments, corporate employers, and workers’ rights organizations to engage in robust social dialogue. Integrating rigorous psychosocial risk management directly into standard occupational safety and health systems is no longer optional.

The rating places Pakistan among nations where freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression are systematically curtailed, despite constitutional guarantees and the country’s ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2010.