When summer vacations begin, Sobia Nisar tries to let her six-year-old daughter enjoy the first few weeks without too much structure. There are visits to cousins, occasional trips to the park, time at home, and an effort to keep screen time as low as possible. But keeping a child busy through a long summer in the city is not easy. The heat limits outdoor play, parents cannot take children out every day, and after
Child Rights in Focus
SAHIWAL: Kameer Police registered a case against a prayer leader and a mosque caretaker and arrested them for allegedly molesting, raping and recording mobile videos of girl and boy students of their madressah at Chak 116/9-L, Ada Shabeel, Kameer Town. Police booked the qari and the caretaker, residents of Ada Shabeel, under a complaint. According to the report, the Qari had established a mosque and madressah, Jamia Noorul Quran, at Ada Shabeel, and he
LAHORE: A woman and her three children were found dead under mysterious circumstances in a rented house in Valencia Town late on July 17. On being informed of the incident, police and forensic experts rushed to the spot and isolated the scene for investigation. As per the initial reports, the deceased were identified as mother Aleena, and her three children – Rehan (16), Aresha (11) and Arsal (6). The police learnt that the mother
KARACHI: Some 120,000 schoolchildren in Karachi and its surrounding areas will undergo free screening for eye ailments through the School Eye Clinic project set up by the Pakistan Eye Bank Society (PEBS) in collaboration with Rotary Club of Heidelberg-Schloss and the German Consulate during August 2026 and July 2027. This was announced at the PEBS on Thursday after the milestone successful completion of the first phase of the project (from May 2025 to April
Education, deemed as the most significant marker for progress in any nation, is kept at an unbelievably low rung of Pakistan’s priority ladder. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the country has a literacy rate of only 62.3%, and around 26.2 million out-of-school children aged 5-16. Late-stage capitalism has also seeped into educational institutes that now operate in almost every other residential street for the sole purpose of profit-making – leeching off desperate
• FCC sets aside LHC judgement, restores revisional court’s order • Directs courts to identify minor parties at outset of proceedings ISLAMABAD: The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) on July 16 laid down guiding principles for all civil and revenue courts dealing with cases relating to the property or inheritance rights of minors. The guidelines require that every court hearing such matters ascertain, at the earliest stage of the proceedings, whether any party is a
RAHIM YAR KHAN: A woman made a suicide bid along with her four minor children by jumping into Sadiq Branch Canal in Sadiqabad on July 16. The children drowned while the woman was rescued. According to Rescue 1122 sources, a woman of Chak 182-P of tehsil Sadiqabad had domestic disputes in her family life. On Thursday morning, she jumped into a canal near Bangla Manthar with her four children Ali Hassan, Aayan, Rayyan and
Police have launched an investigation into the mysterious death of a 13-year-old boy whose body was found outside his house near the Steel Town Sindhi Goth Football Ground in Bin Qasim Town on July 16. According to rescue officials, the deceased was identified as Sabir, 13. The incident came to light after family members found him lying unconscious outside their residence early in the morning. The police were immediately informed and they reached the
• Declares immunisation gap a national public health emergency • Blames governance failures, corruption, weak immunisation system • Calls for an immediate audit of provincial health funds KARACHI: The Pakistan Medical Association has issued an urgent national red alert after clinical and epidemiological data revealed that Pakistan holds a catastrophically high volume of “zero-dose” children in the World Health Organisation’s Eastern Mediterranean Region. Zero-dose children are those who have not received the first dose
Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which calls for inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030. Unfortunately, the country remains far from achieving this target. According to media reports, the national literacy rate has reached 63%, with male literacy at 73% and female literacy at 54%. Sadly, around 26 million children are currently out of school, with girls accounting for 13.7 million of them. This disparity
BAHAWALNAGAR: A son of former divisional leader of a religious party was booked for sexually assaulting a girl student for two years inside the seminary and administering various medications to prevent pregnancy. The first information report registered on the complaint of the victim’s mother of Roopeywala village with Minchinabad Police, stated that 15-year-old ‘A’ had been residing at the Jamia Anwar-i-Ghausia seminary for the past four years to receive religious education from cleric ‘F’,
KARACHI: The prime suspect in the rape and murder of a six-year-old boy confessed before a judicial magistrate on July 14 to raping and murdering the boy and then throwing his body from the third floor into an empty plot. The investigating officer (IO), Sajid, produced the prime suspect along with his accomplices, including his father, uncle and teenage brother, before the court after completing their first physical remand. The IO moved an application