Children of the flood

There is evidence that children have been among the worst affected by the floods.

Natural disaster, like so much else, is almost always unjust. It strikes the vulnerable hardest and takes the worst kind of toll on their lives and well-being. The floods that have affected a fifth of our country are no exception to the rule, and as the waters begin to recede, there is evidence that children have been among the worst affected. This is not just because of the disease and misery that the floods have brought; or even because so many schools have been damaged. The calamity has also opened up the way for exploitation of the worst kind, with mafias moving in quickly to take advantage of the situation. While there is confusion about reports of children separated from parents – and therefore made all the more vulnerable – there are more and more accounts of children being either abducted or sold by desperate parents into prostitution. There have also been stories of trafficking from camps, but it is hard to say how widespread the problem may be.

In the aftermath of a disaster, the effects of which could linger on for months or even years, the exploitation will not end. Families returning to destroyed farmlands will face desperate times given that the disaster has most severely hit parts of the country where poverty runs high. Many of the children rescued over past years from traffickers hail from southern Punjab – an area that has been hit by floods. The same issues of poverty hold true for Sindh and many parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as well as other affected areas. We need a strategy to prevent unscrupulous people moving in to take advantage of the most hapless victims of this disaster. A child protection plan needs to be worked out with the help of international agencies, and put into practice immediately, before the cases of exploitation we are already hearing about begin to grow and take hold of more and more people across our vast flood zone.

Published in The Express Tribune October 4^th, 2010.