ISLAMABAD: Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa was sworn in as Pakistan’s new Supreme Court chief justice on Friday at a ceremony attended by top civilian and military leaders, diplomats and foreign dignitaries.
President Dr. Arif Alvi administered oath to the country’s top judge before an audience that included Prime Minister Imran Khan, Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa and other top government and military officials.
“I will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favor,” Khosa said as he read out the oath.
The incoming chief justice is known as a competent and proficient judge, and has decided around 55,000 cases in a career spanning over two decades long career.
“The legal fraternity expects him [Khosa] to devise a permanent mechanism to clear backlog of around 1.9 million cases pending in the courts as justice delayed is justice denied,” said Habibullah Khan, a senior lawyer of Supreme Court, adding that unlike his predecessor who had cultivated a reputation for judicial activism, Khosa would act as a more classical judge.
At outgoing chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar’s full court reference on Thursday, Justice Khosa said that he would try his best to remove delays in the disposition of cases at all levels of the judicial hierarchy.
In reference to the outgoing chief justice’s crusade to raise funds to build dams in Pakistan, Khosa said on Thursday: “I would also like to build some dams, a dam against undue and unnecessary delays in judicial determination of cases, a dam against frivolous litigation and a dam against fake witnesses and false testimonies and would also try to retire a debt, the debt of pending cases which must be decided at the earliest possible.”
Khosa said that he was aware of the problems in the judicial system, “but I may assure you that no stone shall be left unturned in attending to such issues and in trying to improve the situation.”
Khosa is known to have a penchant for literary quotations and began the 2017 verdict in the Panama Papers case with the line “Behind every great fortune there is a crime” from the popular 1969 novel, “The Godfather,” by Mario Puzo.
Khosa headed the bench that upheld the death penalty for Mumtaz Qadri who murdered Punjab governor Salman Taseer in 2015 for supporting a woman wrongly accused of blasphemy, and was also part of the bench that acquitted a poor, Christian woman in a landmark blasphemy case after eight years on death row.
Khosa will retire on December 21 this year.
Asif Khosa sworn in as Pakistan’s new chief justice
Asif Khosa sworn in as Pakistan’s new chief justice
- Vows to tackle delays in disposal of cases
- Expected to be less activist than his predecessor
Pakistan flags funding strain, host state cooperation gaps in UN peacekeeping
- Pakistan says blue helmets remain the most visible symbol of UN commitment to peace
- The country urges member states to pay contributions on time to sustain UN missions
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday raised concerns over mounting financial pressures on United Nations peacekeeping operations along with a lack of cooperation from some host countries, warning that the challenges risk undermining the effectiveness and safety of missions worldwide.
Pakistan’s top diplomat at the UN flagged the issues while speaking at a UN Security Council briefing on peacekeeping police components.
Pakistan is one of the world’s top troop-contributing countries and has deployed more than 235,000 peacekeepers to 48 UN missions across four continents over the past eight decades.
A total of 182 of its peacekeepers have also lost their lives while serving under the UN flag.
“We are concerned at the current challenges faced by the United Nations peacekeeping, both financial as well as those arising from lack of host state cooperation,” Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad told the council. “Pakistan underscores the importance of full cooperation by host States to enable timely deployment of peacekeepers including police components where authorized by the Security Council.”
He noted that UN missions were operating under acute financial stress, leading to capacity reductions that directly affected mandate delivery and the safety of peacekeepers, while UN police units continued to face gaps between authorized strength and actual deployments.
Ahmad urged UN member states to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time to ensure peacekeeping missions remain operationally capable.
“Blue helmets are the most visible symbol of the United Nations commitment to peace and stability,” he said. “Peacekeeping brings relevance and legitimacy to this organization by making a tangible difference in people’s lives.”
Pakistan has contributed both military and police personnel to UN operations, deploying more than 50 formed police units to missions including Haiti, Darfur, Timor-Leste and Côte d’Ivoire, according to Pakistan’s UN mission.
