- Pakistan’s child protection gaps exposed as adoption scandals reveal unregistered orphanages, weak enforcement, and risks of children becoming paper orphans.
The arrest of Dr Mubina Cassum Aboatwala, chairperson of the NGO HOPE, has once again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses of Pakistan’s child protection system. On 6 August 2025, a judicial magistrate in Karachi ordered her into remand custody after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) alleged that the organisation had been involved in trafficking minors under the cover of adoption. The case was triggered by concerns raised by the US Consulate General’s Fraud Prevention Unit, which flagged three adoption visa applications containing strikingly similar documentation. According to the FIA, HOPE was neither a registered orphanage nor legally empowered to facilitate adoptions, yet children were being presented as “abandoned babies” without adequate evidence of how they had entered care.
The scandal is not an isolated one. In June 2024, Sarim Burney, a prominent social worker, was arrested by the FIA after the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service alerted Pakistani authorities to possible trafficking in the guise of international adoption. Burney has since faced repeated bail hearings and continues to contest the charges. Both matters remain before the courts, and it will be for the judiciary to determine culpability. What they already reveal, however, is an uncomfortable reality: Pakistan’s regulatory gaps create conditions in which children can be transformed into “paper orphans”, their family ties obscured or falsified in order to facilitate cross-border transfers.
The pattern is familiar elsewhere. In Cambodia, UNICEF found that nearly 80 percent of children in “orphanages” had at least one living parent. Families were persuaded, and sometimes pressured, to give up their children with promises of education and support. Those children were then presented as orphans to attract donations or facilitate foreign adoptions. The parallels with Pakistan’s cases suggest that weak gatekeeping here is enabling the same form of exploitation.
What these high-profile cases underline most clearly is that Pakistan needs to strengthen families and family-based care rather than default to institutionalisation
On paper, Pakistan has the laws it needs. Every province requires orphanages to be licensed, and operating without approval is technically a crime. In Punjab, for example, the Destitute and Neglected Children Act, 2004 obliges all homes to register with the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau, while Sindh has similar provisions dating back to the 1970s. Yet unregistered homes continue to be widespread. The gulf between legislation and practice is stark, and without proper enforcement, the law becomes little more than a façade.
Court proceedings confirm how fragile enforcement really is. In 2021, the Sindh High Court was informed that only a minority of orphanages in the province were formally registered, despite statutory obligations. Judges ordered inspections after discovering that many institutions were operating outside the regulatory net, while notices of non-compliance were routinely ignored. Comparable problems exist elsewhere, where social welfare departments lack the resources to enforce licensing, and coordination with law enforcement or child protection authorities is inconsistent. With no reliable data on how many children are in care or why they were admitted, the state is left guessing while children are left exposed.
This lack of gatekeeping matters because the harms of institutionalisation are now beyond dispute. The recent Lancet Commission on Institutionalisation documented how children raised in such settings experience developmental delays, attachment disorders and long-term mental health difficulties. Developmental psychologist Marinus van IJzendoorn has gone further, describing institutionalisation as a form of “structural neglect”, where even well-resourced facilities cannot provide the stable, loving relationships children require. Global evidence therefore reinforces the urgency of shifting away from institutions and towards family-based alternatives/
What these high-profile cases underline most clearly is that Pakistan needs to strengthen families and family-based care rather than default to institutionalisation. Poverty, stigma or temporary crises should not be reasons for permanent separation. With investment in family-strengthening programmes and the development of formal kinship and foster care systems, children can remain within safe and nurturing families. Criminal prosecutions may hold individuals to account, but only policy reforms that prioritise family and enforce existing laws will provide lasting protection. Unless these changes are made with urgency, the same gaps that enabled the Burney and HOPE cases will continue to place children at risk.
Published in The Friday Times on September 12, 2025.
