Capacity building: ‘Violence against children increased in 2014’

Participants lambast lack of research, question statistics presented ay workshop

LAHORE:

“All forms of violence against children are preventable,” Rahatullah Khan of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights said on Wednesday.

Khan made the remarks at a media training workshop on covering acts of violence against children. He said violence against children cut across the distinctions of religion, society, class, income and ethnicity. Khan said the phenomenon was present in every country of the world.

He said violence against children was often tolerated and frequently facilitated by the legal structures of the state. “Violence against children increased by 17 per cent in 2014 compared to 2013,” Khan said quoting figures from a study conducted by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC). Referring to a study by Sahil, another NGO, he said a great number of cases were connected to rape. He said an overwhelming majority of the victims in such cases tended to be acquainted with those who abused them.

Journalist Shahzada Irfan Ahmed shed light on the media’s role in reporting cases of violence against children. He said often that the media did not situate social issues in a larger context. “Only certain incidents are reported without an attempt to investigate their underlying cause,” Ahmed said.

Discussing the Kasur child pornography scandal, he said that the media should discuss specific laws and ministries that deal with such issues when holding the government responsible. “We should focus on specific things rather than talking in general terms,” Ahmed said.

University of Central Punjab Faculty of Media and Communication Studies Dean Mugheesuddin Sheikh spoke about media ethics. He criticised the role of journalists’ unions saying they needed to ensure that no inappropriate content was aired by television channels. “There is no monitoring body for this,” Sheikh said. He said there was a need to formulate and implement a code of conduct on this account.

Government representatives were rapped by participants on the occasion on account of the paucity of research and statistics presented. They said that the presentation was based on statistics sourced from news reports and NGOs when the government could have easily presented figures related to the number of children in the country available with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights in collaboration with the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development and the Child Advocacy Network Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2015.