Perspective

Insights From the 2023 Census Report

The 2023 Census conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics released its complete report in July 2024 indicates that the total population of Pakistan is 240 million out of which the population of children under 18 is 112 Million (47% of the total population). Children Population (under 18) Population under 18 Total Male Female Transgender Pakistan 112,472,700 58,099,978 54,370,121 2,601…

Juvenile Offenders in Punjab

The total number of convicted and undertrial juveniles imprisoned in various borstal institutes and jails of Punjab province was 645 as on 15 March 2022 (Prisons Department, Govt. of Punjab). Out of the total number of juvenile offenders, 81% (523) juveniles were on trial (under trial) and 19% were convicted…

Transport For Schooling

A JUDGE at the Lahore High Court recently ordered that schools should arrange for…

Grace Marks by Sindh Government

In a move as surprising as it is contentious, the Sindh provincial…

Another Child Dead

Karachi and Lahore are often pitted against each other as major urban cities with drastically different levels of development, be it in infrastructure, healthcare or security. While Karachi suffers from an ordained fate of broken roads and broken administrative promises, Lahore seems to be progressing full speed ahead. Although, there…

Students and Drug Addiction

The magnitude of drug abuse among students in Karachi continues to get worse, despite intervention efforts by the government and social welfare groups. While reliable data is hard to come by due to taboos around the subject, a 2024 survey by the Pakistan Narcotics Control Board found that 44% of…

Uneducated and Unwell

Pakistan’s Economic Survey 2025-26 offers a useful yardstick to gauge the state of the country’s health and education sectors over the past year. The assessment, however, offers little cause for celebration. Beneath the government’s claims of gradual progress, Pakistan continues to rank among the poorest performers in South Asia on…

Drugs and Teens

A DECADE ago, during one of the ‘Growing Up’ sessions I was holding in Karachi schools, I talked to seventh graders about drugs and addiction. Their interest and giggling prompted me to ask whether they knew where drugs could be obtained. They named several locations. Later, I realised that drug…

Damaged Childhoods

CHILD abuse is so prevalent that the UN ranked Pakistan as the least safe country for children. Even so, more than five years after the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Act, 2020 — Pakistan’s first national child protection law — central provisos, including the agency for rapid alerts for missing…

Polio Progress

PAKISTAN’S latest sub-national polio campaign offers encouraging evidence that the country can still push back against a virus that has proved stubbornly difficult to eliminate. Reaching more than 18.6m children across 79 high-risk districts and achieving 98pc coverage is no small feat. Behind it was the dedication of over 163,000…

Rabies Toll

EVERY year, rabies, the deadliest zoonotic disease, kills more than 59,000 people worldwide. In Pakistan, it is one of myriad public health challenges poised to become an epidemic. Between January and April, Sindh recorded a staggering 85,891 cases of dog bites. Last year, it logged over 285,000 cases with 22…

Raised on Fear

One day Suhana, a Year 6 student, entered the classroom with tears in her eyes. Her teachers had noticed that she had become unusually quiet over the past few months and was continuously failing her assessments. Teachers often called her out, asking her to focus more on studies and improve…

Child Nutrition Crisis

Pakistan’s child nutrition crisis has long been treated as a welfare issue when, in reality, it is a national emergency with generational consequences. To cater to this worsening crisis, Unicef has partnered with the University of Health Sciences to launch a capacity-building programme aimed at incorporating nutrition and child health…

The Polio Fight Goes On

It is enough of an ignominy that this country is one of only two, the other being Afghanistan, where polio still remains endemic. However, it is even more shameful that even those brave souls who are trying to eradicate this disease from the country are routinely the target of violent,…

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