Protecting our children

Whenever Madeleine McCann’s picture pops up on TV or on the internet, it not only transports me back to my time in the UK in mid-2007, it also makes me ponder over the negligence on the part of our government to deal with the cases of missing children. I still remember when the news of the three-year-old British girl, Madeleine, went viral. She had gone missing from her bed in a hotel in Portugal, where she was holidaying with her parents and other siblings. In the eight years since she went missing, the hunt still continues.

Scotland Yard published an image of Madeleine earlier this year, showing how she would have looked after five years. In contrast, thousands of children are kidnapped, abused and sold into beggary in our part of the world. According to a local NGO, Roshni Helpline, around 3,000 children go missing in Karachi every year. In the first half of 2015, 1,667 cases of missing children were reported in the city. Around 1,070 were male while 597 were female. All of them were aged between four and 18 years. The NGO collects data from police stations and other sources, which is based on the registration of cases of missing children. These figures are from the registered cases, which means that the actual number of missing children may be even higher as there are sure to be cases that go unreported as well.

Most missing children belong to poor families and we don’t see satisfactory efforts being made to recover them. How diligently our police try to rescue these children is an important point of consideration. Most children are kidnapped to be sold into beggary, raised to work in mines and brick kilns or used for organ trade. It is a pity that the police often resist filing an FIR when a child goes missing. Under the law – both the Criminal Procedure Code and the Pakistan Penal Code – the scenario of a missing child is categorised as a non-cognisable offence, which gives police an excuse not to file an FIR. We don’t see many NGOs, except for one or two, working in this area. Roshni Helpline recently identified at least 17 beggar colonies in Karachi that pose a risk to the safety and security of children. There is a dire need to prioritise the issue of child safety and security in the country, which is not the case at the moment.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th,  2015.