perspective-child sexual abuse - Page 2

perspective-child online protection

Unveiling Deepfakes

Laila* first met Adeel* at a fine dining restaurant along the coastline of Karachi city, after eight months of online dating on Instagram. She was then 20, he 21. The two talked for hours as the golden sun set, meeting the horizon of the sea. Laila described Adeel as the kindest, most caring man she ever met, and wanted to…

A Silent Epidemic: Child Sexual Abuse in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Thirteen-year-old Asim* was quieter than usual when he returned to his home in Jhelum from a motorcycle mechanic’s workshop after completing his first day as a chotu – a term widely used for apprentices. His father, a rickshaw driver, noticed but casually asked about his day at his new workplace…

Child Marriage: Laws, Verdicts, Solutions

Pakistan turned 77 this year, yet the children harbored by the fifth…

Between Books and Screens

A SCHOOL administrator recently remarked in a tone of resignation that these…

The Horrors of AI

The year 2026 started on an alarming note regarding the use of artificial intelligence. One of the viral cases these days is Britain’s media regulator investigation into Elon Musk’s X over concerns its Grok AI chatbot was creating sexually intimate deepfake images in violation of its duty to protect people…

Ghost Commitments: Pakistan’s Child Rights Crisis

This year on Universal Children’s Day, as Pakistan prepares for its 2025 review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, I’m forced to reflect on a 35-year-old promise. In 1990, Pakistan was one of the six initiators of the World Summit for Children, a champion for the…

Plight of Children

The plight of children in Pakistan can be gauged by a recent report that says that in the first six months of 2025, over 4,000 cases of violence against children were reported in Punjab alone. Perhaps even more concerning is that the report by Sustainable Social Development Organisation (SSDO) is…

Digital Violence is Real Violence

Violence against women remains among the most pervasive and least prosecuted human rights violations in the world. For decades, this violence occurred mainly in homes, workplaces, streets or institutions. Today, it has expanded into a new and far more complex frontier: the digital realm. As the country and the world…

For the Children

WORLD Children’s Day is upon us, yet countless children are denied even simple rights that should never be in question. This year’s call to “listen to children and stand up for their rights” feels painfully apt. Millions of children wake up each day to fear and uncertainty. In conflict zones,…

Futures Snatched By Force Of Faith

The concerns regarding forced conversion are not a new phenomenon in our part of the world. Almost a century ago the All India Muslim League chalked out the rules for conversion in this region. The All India Muslim League adopted a resolution in December, 1927 at Calcutta which addressed the…

Child Abuse and Islamabad

Recent data published by the interior ministry has revealed that our capital city has had 200 cases of child sexual abuse registered between January 2021 and June 2025. While the high number of cases is a major crisis in its own right, what makes it even more harrowing is that…

A Mirror To The Nation’s Young

The State of Children in Pakistan 2024 report was prepared by and launched on April 30 this year by the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC). Established by the Federal Government on February 28, 2020 as an independent statutory body, the NCRC has the overarching mandate for the…

The Children We Sacrifice

Pakistani children aren’t safe. That’s not opinion or exaggeration. It’s the bleak, burning truth we keep looking away from. They’re ignored, exploited, brutalised and abandoned on every possible front. But don’t think for a second the numbers in this piece tell the whole story. For every reported case, dozens vanish…

Horror Of Child Pornography

Another horrifying incident has come out of the hotbed of child exploitation, Muzaffargarh. A young boy, sent to collect his brother’s unpaid wages, was sexually assaulted and filmed by a man his family once relied on for employment. This case, shocking as it is, comes on the heels of an…