PAKISTAN’S contribution to rising poverty across the Middle East, North Africa and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is troubling. According to the World Bank, the country accounts for nearly half of the region’s people living in extreme poverty. Ours is a story of repeated hardship. Millions of Pakistanis have endured the pandemic, deadly floods, soaring inflation, and years of economic uncertainty, often with little opportunity to recover before the next crisis arrives. For a poor household,
Child Rights in Focus
SAHIWAL: A 17‑year‑old mentally challenged girl and her newborn baby died at the Sahiwal Teaching Hospital, seven months after she was allegedly subjected to gang rape by her maternal cousin and his two unidentified accomplices. The victim, a resident of Chak 90/9‑L, fainted at home on April 19, 2026. Her sister called a midwife who told the family that the girl was pregnant. Later, she was referred to the hospital for a medical examination
RAWALPINDI: A nine-year-old girl student from Lahore was allegedly subjected to rape while visiting Rawalpindi with her grandmother to attend a wedding ceremony in Sadiqabad, police said. A resident of Lahore registered an FIR with the Sadiqabad police stating that his two daughters had come to Rawalpindi along with their grandmother to attend the wedding ceremony of a relative on September 23. He said that a few days after the marriage when his family
PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Commission (KPCPWC) formally launched a province-wide awareness and sensitisation campaign against child sexual abuse and exploitation, aimed at strengthening public awareness, promoting prevention and responsible reporting and reinforcing collective action to ensure a safe and protective environment for children across the province. A statement issued here said that the provincial launch had brought together government representatives, development partners, civil society organisations, religious scholars, child protection stakeholders, media
THE scourge of female disappearances in Pakistan should be a matter of shame. Institutional reforms and criminalising chauvinistic traditions remain long overdue measures. The Lahore High Court, during the hearing of a case of disappearance, was informed by Punjab’s police chief that over 500 cases of girls reported missing were still pending in the province. The figure was shocking for the court. Not only was concern expressed at the ordeal of the families of
LAHORE: The Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) has assigned a task to assess campaign performance, identify missing children, and operational gaps to check the quality of the ongoing polio eradication campaigns. The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by EOC Coordinator Khalid Parvaiz here on Thursday with district health and polio teams from 11 districts of Punjab. The meeting reviewed campaign indicators at district and union council levels, with particular focus on identifying
• NCRC recommends boosting NCCIA capacity, setting up special units for exploitation probes • Proposes Peca review from child rights perspective • Urges integrating age verification into Digital Nation Pakistan Act ISLAMABAD: Protecting minors from online grooming, exploitation and harmful content is the state’s responsibility, the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC) told the Islamabad High Court while proposing sweeping legal and institutional reforms to safeguard children on social media. In a
KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Oct 2 ordered a province-wide enrolment drive to bring out-of-school children back to classrooms on the pattern of the Thatta pilot model, where 702 students, including 409 girls and 102 out-of-school and dropout children, were enrolled in just nine days from Sept 21 to 30 in five newly upgraded schools. He was presiding over a meeting to review the progress of the Sindh Secondary Education Improvement
The internet has become an ordinary part of childhood, but the protections surrounding young users remain anything but ordinary. A new Kaspersky analysis offers a revealing picture of where Pakistani children are spending their time online. During the first eight months of 2026, YouTube accounted for 31.2% of their mobile app activity, followed by Instagram at 18.8% and WhatsApp at 17.4%. Multiplayer games and platforms such as Roblox and Discord also featured prominently in
• Indus Hospital officials say nine rabies deaths reported at health facility in 2025 • Seminar organised to promote rabies prevention and timely post-exposure treatment • Sindh chief secy says increase in reported cases reflects greater public awareness rather than mere rise in incidence KARACHI: As many as 28 cases of rabies — an invariably fatal disease once clinical symptoms appear — were reported at the Indus Hospital from January to September this year.
GWADAR: A private school came under attack in Kech district on Oct 2, officials said. Armed men entered the premises of Roshan Grammar School in the Menaz area of Buleda tehsil and opened fire, they said, adding that the school’s CCTV system was destroyed in the attack. Confirming the incident, the school’s director Zahoor Baloch told reporters that the attack was carried out during Friday prayers. Mr Baloch, who is currently in Karachi, said
CHARSADDA: Police arrested a man for assaulting a five-year-old boy here on Oct 2. According to the first information report (FIR), the incident took place in the Station Kallay area of Tangi. The child’s mother told police that her son returned home crying and alleged that a neighbour, identified as Hussainullah, had assaulted him. The child alleged that the suspect threatened him with consequences if he disclosed the incident to anyone. Police registered the