perspective-child rights

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…

Transport For Schooling

A JUDGE at the Lahore High Court recently ordered that schools should arrange for and organise transport for schoolchildren by the end of the winter break. The order came in the hearings on the case about smog in Lahore. The use of public transport for schooling is expected to reduce vehicular traffic…

The Age Of Consent And The Borders Of Belief

ICT Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2025 marks a pivotal step toward a…

The Case for Teaching Punjabi in Schools

THE chief minister of Punjab, Ms Maryam Nawaz, has said that Punjabi…

Better learning

IN mainstream schools in Pakistan, challenges abound. From resource constraints to technological barriers, from limited professional development opportunities to high teacher turnover, the teaching and learning landscape has been contending with several issues. Perhaps the most urgent concern is the large classes that preclude getting to know students personally. The…

Nourishing Pakistan

PAKISTAN’S nutrition crisis is not short of diagnosis. What it lacks is the machinery and political discipline to act on what is known. That was the most useful message to emerge from DawnMedia’s two-day Act for Nutrition conference in Islamabad, where experts argued that malnutrition cannot be confined to the…

Hospital tragedy

WHERE does one begin? The mind goes first to the parents of the 14 newborns who died early on January 26 in the Mother and Child Health Ward of Islamabad’s Pims Hospital. The heart falters at the sheer scale of their loss. Their grief is shared across the country by people…

PIMS Tragedy

A horrible tragedy has occurred at the heart of the capital city, shaking the nation to its core. Fourteen newborn babies are dead after a fire tore through the Mother and Child Hospital at PIMS. They were among the most helpless patients imaginable, incapable of fleeing or calling for help.…

School Children’s Safety

A child’s journey to school should never be a gamble. Yet in Pakistan, thousands of students travel every day in overcrowded vans, ageing Suzuki vehicles and rickshaws that are often poorly maintained and sometimes fitted with dangerously installed LPG cylinders. That this has been allowed to become routine is itself…

Rabies Awareness and Prevention

Sindh currently operates hundreds of rabies prevention centres that offer free vaccines, available to anyone who simply walks in. Yet, despite this apparent vigilance, the province has already neared the tally for last year’s rabies’ deaths with four months still to go. In 2025, as many as 22 people lost…

Child Stunting is Pakistan’s Hidden Economic Crisis

KARACHI: Pakistan’s economic debate rarely strays far from familiar territory. Inflation, public debt, exports, taxation and the energy crisis dominate political speeches and newspaper headlines alike. These are undoubtedly pressing concerns for a country grappling with recurring fiscal instability. Yet beneath these visible economic challenges lies another crisis – less…

Our Education System Needs More than a New Syllabus

Pakistan’s education crisis is not simply a crisis of outdated textbooks. It is a crisis of an outdated educational philosophy. While the world is moving towards AI, automation and knowledge-based industries, too many of our classrooms remain organised around memorisation, rote learning and examination scores. We have modernised the language…

HIV Crisis

PAKISTAN’s presence among countries with the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in Asia is a matter of shame. Globally, the virus is found in drug addicts, sex workers and other high-risk sections. What makes our crisis more distressing is the victims’ profile: children and low-risk groups who have been infected because of…

Growth Denied

THE Sindh government’s agreement with the World Bank to combine health, nutrition, sanitation, social protection and agriculture programmes acknowledges that child stunting cannot be treated by the health department alone. The proposed secretariat, district committees and dashboard could replace scattered schemes with targets and accountability. But institutional architecture will mean…

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