Perspective - Page 4

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…

Permitted age for employment of children as domestic workers

Do you know what the minimum age is for children in the different provinces of Pakistan to be employed as domestic workers? Child labour is a provincial subject in Pakistan after the 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010. The 18th Constitutional Amendment devolved the issue of labour and employment to the…

Juvenile Offenders in Punjab

The total number of convicted and undertrial juveniles imprisoned in various borstal…

Transport For Schooling

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

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,…

Enrolled, But Not In School

Twenty million children are characterised as ‘out of school’ in Pakistan. This figure is alarming on its own. But there is a second, quieter crisis unfolding inside the school system that we’re neglecting. A crisis that never makes the headlines and a crisis no enrollment campaign will solve. When you…

Gender Progress

On May 11, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that that custody of a child cannot be granted to the grandmother or paternal aunt solely on the basis of the mother’s second marriage. The ruling came in connection with a case regarding the custody of a nine-year-old child. Custody had initially…

Child Marriage: a Persistent Form of Gender Inequality

Child marriage is not a tradition we can afford to romanticise. It is a violation of childhood, consent and opportunity. Defined as any formal or informal union where one or both parties are under 18, child marriage remains one of Pakistan’s most persistent forms of gender inequality. Despite legal prohibitions,…

A Better Start

THE first 1,000 days of a child’s life often shape decades to come. In Pakistan, where chronic malnutrition has long harmed childhood development, an evaluation of the Benazir Nashonuma Programme shows that some children are finally getting a better start. The Aga Khan University study found a 22pc reduction in…