perspective- child protection - Page 3

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 juvenile offenders. All juvenile offenders were male and no female…

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…

Ghost Schools

KARACHI: Apropos the letter “Ghost Teachers” published on September 19, 2024, the…

Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 and Jinnah

The Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929 was drafted by Quaid-i-Azam- Mohammad Ali…

STOLEN CHILDHOODS, SILENT TEARS

In the quiet courtyards of rural Pakistan, a 13-year-old girl is pulled from her school desk and handed a bridal dress. Her childhood ends not with celebration, but with chores, early pregnancy, and a silence enforced by custom. This is not a regional anomaly; it is a national emergency. According…

Criminalising Child Marriage

CHILD marriage persists in Pakistan for many reasons, and ending the practice requires measures that are sensitive to the problem’s complexity. Debates on child marriage tend to reduce this complexity to two opposing legal positions. Proponents of gender equality and child welfare support higher minimum age limits for child marriage…

Brutality Behind Rejections

The Islamabad IG has rightly called this a case of ‘repeated rejections’. Another young woman has been silenced, not by society’s disapproval of her ambitions, but by its refusal to protect her from male entitlement and rage. The brutal murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf in Islamabad, allegedly…

Save The Girls

SOME traditions that hinder individual progress are a heavy cross for society to bear. In Pakistan’s deeply patriarchal environment, where a female child’s agency is determined by her biological age, President Asif Zardari’s assent to the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Bill, 2025, despite resistance from the Council of…

Our Vulnerable Children

Some 3,364 cases of child abuse were reported across Pakistan in 2024, according to Sahil’s annual Cruel Numbers report – an alarming figure that should shock the conscience of the nation. The cases, drawn from media reports across all provinces, include 1,828 incidents of child sexual abuse, 1,204 abductions, 241…

Pakistan’s Children

THE National Commission on the Rights of the Child recently published its first-ever report of data, challenges and recommendations on the State of Children in Pakistan, 2024. While the state of child rights remains dismal in Pakistan, this government-owned reflective report is a welcome change from the time when similar…

Wounded Childhood

PAKISTAN is unkind to its children. The NCRC’s State of Children in Pakistan Report 2024 scans the grim circumstances our young are forced to navigate, and spells out the systemic apathy towards their safety, health and progress. It asserts that the country faces tremendous difficulties in safeguarding the rights of…

A Gentler World

APRIL 30 was the International Day to End Corporal Punishment — one that could slip into obscurity unless pulled into the light with the urgency required to end cyclical, intergenerational violence. In workshops with teachers in Islamabad Capital Territory, a question of interest has been whether they themselves experienced classroom-based…

Protect Our Children

As the World takes cognisance of the International Day to End Corporal Punishment of Children which falls today (April 30), the question again arises: where does Pakistan stand in protecting its children from being beaten in institutional settings? Pakistan’s issue is two-pronged. One, it houses the world’s second-largest out-of-school children’s…

Child Crime and Charity

The greater part of the Juvenile Justice System Act, 2018, which repealed the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, deals with the reintegration of the child offenders in society instead of shunning them as an outcaste. Philanthropy can prove helpful in achieving this goal of juvenile justice as demonstrated in the…