Dismal picture: Childhood lost

Report reveals appalling statistics about state of children in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD:

The innocence of a child seems a difficult thing to preserve in Pakistan, suggest findings of a report by a non-government organisation working for child rights.

In 2012, around 5,659 cases of violence against children were reported across Pakistan from January to October, which included 943 murders, 1,170 injuries, 302 cases of rape, 204 cases of child trafficking, and 260 cases of missing children.

These were among the statistics presented in the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) annual report “The State of Pakistan’s Children 2012”, which was launched on Tuesday.

The report presents a dismal account of the deteriorating state of child rights and offers recommendations for the promulgation of laws to improve their well-being in the country, which is ranked 113 out of 120 countries measured on the Education Development Index, and almost 225,000 neonatal deaths (less than 28 days after birth) are reported annually in Pakistan.

The report provides a systematic overview of annual developments in various sectors including child rights, education, health, violence against children, administration of juvenile justice and child labour.





Major findings

The report used the Madadgaar National Helpline as a source for the incidents of violence reported, including 407 cases of sexual assault, 547 torture cases, 323 suicides, 530 kidnappings and 176 vani cases. It said 3,861 cases of child sexual abuse were reported across the country in 2012. Of these, 2,788 cases were reported by newspapers, rights organisations and non-governmental organisations. It was also noted that of these, 52 per cent (1,450) occurred in rural areas; and the other 48% in urban areas. The majority of the cases were reported in Punjab (68 per cent), followed by Sindh (19 per cent), Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (five per cent), Balochistan and the federal areas (three per cent each).

According to the report, Madadgaar Helpline reported that 170 children went missing or were kidnapped from Karachi alone in the first nine months of 2012. In Lahore, 400 cases of kidnappings were registered in the first three months of 2012.

Education

The report stated that almost 25 million children and adolescents are out of school in Pakistan. Of these, seven million children aged between three to five years have yet to receive early education.

The report also recommended that budgetary allocations for education must be substantially increased each year to meet the target of 7% of GDP by 2015, as committed in the National Education Policy 2009.

Child labour

According to the report, 12 million child labourers were reported to be working in the country. The report also highlighted the ineffectiveness of existing legislation on child and bonded labour, and also emphasised the lack of concrete measures towards enacting comprehensive child labour legislation in the aftermath of the 18th Amendment.

The report recommended that following the passage of the 18th Amendment, provincial governments should expedite legislation on child labour laws, which should ban child labour in the formal and informal economic sectors and should be in line with Article 25-A of the Constitution.

Health

According to the WHO, approximately 0.5 million malaria cases are reported from different parts of Pakistan annually, mostly in rural areas. It is estimated that 1,500-2,000 of these patients die due to complications resulting from the disease.



Juvenile justice

The report revealed that the number of juveniles detained in prisons fell from 1,421 in 2011 to 1,398 in 2012. The detainees included 1,219 under trial and 179 convicted juveniles. In 2012, Punjab had the highest number of juvenile offenders (815), followed by Sindh (303), K-P (233) and Balochistan (47).

According to the report, Pakistan lacks adequate facilities to deal with children who come in conflict with the law. The report also lamented that 12 years after the promulgation of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000, there is ineffective implementation of the law as children are denied bail, kept with adult prisoners and produced in before courts in handcuffs.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2013.