SPECIAL REPORT - Extending Constitutional Rights to Pakistan’s Tribal Areas Contents

The study assesses the effectiveness of the rollout strategies, the degree of buy-in from the local population, and the sociopolitical and resource constraints that may adversely affect the extension of constitutional guarantees. [...] Participants in the focus groups suggested that the idea of collective respon- sibility in the FCR and the jirga system was a major issue in terms of the fairness of the inquiry; in- dividuals who were not responsible for an offense were put in custody so as to force the accused into handing themselves over for the jirga hearing. [...] Although the small sample size of the data does not permit any definitive conclusions to be drawn, the key informant interviews suggest that the practice in Mohmand District was the prevailing one in most of the NMDs at the time the research was conducted. [...] It proved difficult, however, to accurately assess the time it took to decide a case in the criminal courts of Khyber and Mohmand Districts be- tween March and November 2019, because many of the cases were originally registered under the FCR, and the transition to the new system may have affected the duration of cases. [...] The average duration of criminal cases in Punjab provides a point of comparison to assess the reasonableness of the dura- tion of the cases completed in the NMDs.