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‘Intel agencies should be answerable to parliament’

* Participants of roundtable moot urge legislation for controlling security agencies’ operations

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Parliamentarians from the treasury and opposition parties on Tuesday said the country’s intelligence agencies should be made accountable to parliament. “A parliamentary sub-committee, with members from the Defence, Interior and Human Rights committees should be created to oversee intelligence agencies’ operations,” members of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) demanded in a roundtable meeting.

The participants of the discussion included the chairpersons of the Senate and National Assembly’s committees on Defence, members of the respective committees, parliamentarians, and analysts. NA Standing Committee on Defence Chairperson Dr Azra Fazal Pechuhu and Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production Chairman Lt Gen (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi presented the perspectives of the parliamentary bodies regarding the oversight of intelligence agencies.

Arnold Luethold, head of Africa and Middle East Division of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) presented a lecture on the oversight of intelligence agencies. The participants said Pakistan needed to start preparing legislation for the intelligence agencies to operate under.

They agreed that there was a need for better inter-agency coordination. Parliamentarians also demanded PILDAT’s support for various parliamentary committees on the issue. “Specific technical and advisory support is required for committees such as Defence, Human Rights and Interior to carry out their monitoring role effectively,” they said. The roundtable meeting also formally launched the Urdu version of an international publication, “Making Intelligence Accountable: Legal Standards and Best Practices for Oversight of Intelligence Agencies”.

The book is the Urdu version of the book printed by DCAF in collaboration with the Human Rights Centre, Department of Law, University of Durham and the Norwegian Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee-OES.

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