The Hafiz Hamdullah case and covid-19 vaccinations pose essentially the same question.
The former JUI(F) Senator from Balochistan, Hafiz Hamdullah, had his CNIC restored by the Islamabad High Court, in a judgment discussing the law of citizenship at a time when millions of people on Pakistani soil may be deprived of covid-19 vaccinations because they do not have a CNIC.
Hafiz Hamdullah was declared a non-citizen by NADRA and deprived of his CNIC at the time of his party’s Azadi March in 2019. As soon as NADRA took away his CNIC, PEMRA banned him from appearing in TV talk-shows. The IHC noted that he was born in Pakistan, his father worked for provincial government, and his son received a commission in the armed forces. The IHC said that neither NADRA nor the intelligence agency which declared him a non-citizen had the right to adjudicate upon his citizenship. The IHC judgment dilated at length on the benefits of citizenship, which are very wide-ranging. One such benefit, in this time of covid-19, is that of eligibility for a vaccine. There are an estimated three million people who neither possess CNICs, nor are registered as refugees. While the bulk are Afghan refugees, there are also Bengali, Rohingya and Nepali migrants.
Even if parents have entered illegally, children born in Pakistan are eligible for citizenship. However, they cannot claim citizenship without going to court, something they cannot afford. None of them are former Senators like Hafiz Hamdullah. The government policy of benign neglect will no longer work, for unvaccinated they are a danger to the entire community. If they cannot be expelled, they must be vaccinated, if only to safeguard those whose citizenship even NADRA has no doubts about. The pandemic had made only too clear that this is no longer a politico-administrative question about citizenship, but one of public health. The government cannot bury its head in the sand in the hope that the problem will go away. It must formulate a policy on vaccinating those without ID cards, lest it be accused of callousness towards its own citizens.
