On 24 November 2004, Dawn28 reported that Senator Farhatullah Babar produced a clipping in a meeting of the Human Rights Committee of the Senate about a three-year-old girl sentenced under the FCR. However, the FATA Secretary of Security denied the report and dismissed it as fictitious. The secretary said that “A political agent will be out of his mind to sentence three-year-olds under the FCR.” Consequently, the matter was not followed up. However, the Human Rights Committee expressed concern that the report may be true and demanded that such provisions of the FCR which permitted such actions should be abolished.

Later, on 1 December 2004, Dawn29 reported that the Law Minister had assured the Senate that the government, through consultations with tribal leaders, was working to amend the FCR.

In 2005, two committees were constituted on the FCR. 1) The Senate of Pakistan’s Standing Committee on Human Rights had constituted a sub-committee on the FCR which was comprised of Senator Farhatullah Baber, Senator Hamidullah and Senator Dr Saad. In August 2005, the sub-committee had submitted their final report along with recommendations to the main committee in which amendments were proposed in the FCR. (Daily Times 2005)30 The report of the subcommittee has not been made public yet.

2) The Governor KP also constituted a review committee under the Chairmanship of former Justice Supreme Court, Mian Mohammad Ajmal which submitted its report in 2006. The committee was asked to recommend necessary amendments and modifications in certain clauses of the law. In a workshop organized by CAMP in 2009, Retired Mian Ajmal said that the Committee has proposed many changes including that the name of the law should be changed. Besides a decrease in the powers of the Political Agent proposed by the committee, it was suggested that judicial powers should be “divided between the jirga and FATA Tribunal that will be on the pattern of Sessions courts and will be formed of members eligible to preside over high courts or shariat courts. Obsolete laws and sections have been completely removed and people [will] now have a right to ask for bail”. The Committee investigated the practice of the law in FATA in depth but since submission of its report in 2006, the state has not taken any steps to implement it as yet. Neither has the report itself been made public to date.

In 2009, under the chairmanship of Senator Raza Rabbani, a Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform was constituted. The committee, after reviewing Article 247 of the Constitution of Pakistan, recommended to the Federal Government of Pakistan that, “the Government should take immediate steps to implement the reforms amended by the president in respect of FATA, particularly about major changes in the FCR and providing opportunities to the national political parties to organize their activities in that area. The Government may also associate other parties who are stakeholders in the on-going consultations regarding administration of the Tribal Areas” (2009: 19). 31

On 8 April 2010, the passing of the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment was made public, but the government did not amend Article 247 which would have allowed parliamentarians to legislate and the Courts of Pakistan to exercise justice for the people of FATA.