(Kota Kinabalu, Monday): Tomorrow, the Prime
Minister, who is currently on a visit to Switzerland, is to address the 90th
International Labour Organisation Convention in Geneva.
Mahathir should make use of the international forum to announce Malaysia’s readiness to ratify human rights treaties and ILO conventions, in particular the right of workers to form unions which is currently denied to workers of certain industries such as the electronics industry.
Suhakam, in its Annual Report 2000 tabled in Parliament in April last year, had recommended that Malaysia should ratify “as soon as possible” three human rights instruments, namely:
The
Suhakam annual report said:
“The
international human right rights Conventions which are currently in force in the
field of international law represent a move by their proponents to provide
international norms of civilized conduct in line with the obligations spelt out
by the UN Charter. It is a new field of jurisprudence which no nation can afford
to ignore if it is to keep pace with the international community of nations.”
It does Malaysia no international credit that out of 25 major human rights instruments listed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Malaysia has only ratified five of them.
If
Mahathir is not prepared to make use of the international forum provided by the
90th ILO Convention in Geneva tomorrow to announce the government’s
readiness to ratify international human rights conventions, the government
should present a full report to Parliament next week as to why it had rejected
the Suhakam recommendations, giving specific reasons why the government has
refused to ratify 20 of the 25 major international human
rights instruments.
(10/6/2002)