BAHAWALNAGAR: A widow and her two minor daughters, who went missing six days ago, have yet to be traced, while their family fears they may have been abducted for sexual assault. According to a first information report registered with B-Division police, ‘S’ (28) had been living with her father in Madni Colony for the past four years following her husband’s death. She has two daughters ‘F’ (6), and ‘U’ (4). On Oct 7, at
Child Rights in Focus
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,
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: Police have registered a case against a man accused of sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl in the Sadiqabad police jurisdiction, as well as several of his relatives who allegedly attempted to suppress the incident and harassed the child and her family. According to the complaint filed by the girl’s father, Nauman Ijaz, his two daughters, aged eight and six, travelled from Lahore to Rawalpindi with their paternal grandmother on September 23 to attend
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
On the International Day of the Girl, coming up on October 11 (tomorrow), we are reminded of a simple but often overlooked truth: girls’ rights cannot be separated from their right to childhood. This year’s theme, “End Child Marriage. Invest in Girls’ Rights”, asks us to look beyond the progress we celebrate and confront the gaps that still shape millions of girls’ lives. It ends with leaving school, being married too young or becoming
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
RAWALPINDI: The body of a 15-year-old girl who went missing while on her way to a madrassa was recovered from her maternal uncle’s house in the Pirwadhai area on Oct 7. Police took the body into custody and shifted it to a hospital for a post-mortem examination. The girl’s maternal uncle, identified as Mumraiz, was reportedly missing from the house. The girl, identified as Maimoona, was reported missing on Tuesday after she left home
• 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