A decomposed body of a five-year-old child, Ali Muhammad, who had been missing since December 15, 2023, were discovered in a drain in Korangi, near Mehran Town, on 5 January 2024, as revealed by the police. The family, asserting that Ali had been kidnapped and murdered, expressed their distress. According to the authorities, the child’s decomposed body was retrieved from a sewerage line close to his residence and subsequently taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate
Child Rights in Focus
Human rights, child rights and civil society activists, along with legal experts and representatives of independent human rights institutions, police and government officials on January 4, 2024 underlined the need to finalise the law to criminalise child domestic labour in order to curb this exploitative practice which, they described as a form of slavery. They were speaking at a consultation session on the ‘Prohibition of the Child Domestic Labour Bill 2024’, jointly organised by
The Senate Standing Committee on Interior, led by Senator Mohsin Aziz, instructed relevant authorities on January 5, 2024 to take action in prohibiting websites housing questionable content to combat the escalating exposure of children to online explicit material. During the meeting, the committee addressed this issue along with other agenda items. Officials updated the committee on efforts by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to tackle this problem. They highlighted
The Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori has promulgated an ordinance which prohibits child actors from working during school timings revealed by a news report. The ordinance, has been titled Sindh Children Drama Industry Ordinance 2023. The ordinance stated that it was aimed at safeguarding the educational rights and well-being of children by prohibiting their involvement in dramatic performances during school timings. “This ordinance recognises the importance of a child’s education and aims to ensure that
KARACHI: According to a report published by Daily Dawn, more than 500 women and underage girls were sexually assaulted in Karachi alone during the year 2023 which also saw 4,042 cases of physical assault on them, the police surgeon said. A spokesperson for the charity told Dawn on 31 Dec 2023 that the data was based on the figures of those killed or wounded across the city and reported at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical
According to report published by Daily Dawn, Unicef is urgently appealing for $135.6 million from global donors to meet the pressing humanitarian needs of over 5.5 million individuals in Pakistan, with a focus on assisting 3.4 million children. The call for funding, outlined in a new Unicef report, aims to address critical ongoing challenges stemming from the nutrition crisis following the 2022 floods and to continue aiding Afghan populations seeking refuge in Pakistan. This
BANNU: According to report by Daily The News, unidentified miscreants torched a girls’ school in Meryan Tehsil of Bannu district on 29 Dec 2023 night. The Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Kotka Mumbati Barakzai was targeted in the overnight incident. The building suffered a significant damage and the science lab was turned to ashes. The miscreants also vandanised the boundary wall of the school besides stealing the solar panels. In a graffiti written
The school exam is the cornerstone of any educational system which is responsible for assessing the academic performance of students based on a prescribed curriculum and textbooks, certifying that the students have met certain standards, and evaluating the education system’s performance for the purposes of accountability. School exams exert a powerful influence on the lives of students, but have, unfortunately, not played their due role in accomplishing the aim of education. Transforming such exams
RECENTLY, at a history conference on academic freedom held at SZABIST, a session was devoted to analysing the culture of silence that has come to prevail in our academia. It was attributed to the penchant of the powers that be to clamp down on the free expression of opinion by scholars who want to expose the unpleasant truths of our history. If they choose to defy censorship guidelines, the consequences can be dire for
The Juvenile Justice System Act 2018 (JJSA) was enacted on 22nd May, 2018 in Pakistan with the object to provide an effective criminal justice system and enable social reintegration for juvenile. However, children below the age of 18 are not dealt properly and the stakeholders are not well conversant with the procedure to be observed while dealing with categories of children both in contact with law and conflict with law. This toolkit contains guidelines
ISLAMABAD: The Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations on the international spread of poliovirus has warned that re-infection of epidemiologically-critical areas and historical reservoirs in Pakistan and Afghanistan represent a significant risk to the gains made during the last 18 months. The emergency committee, in a statement issued in Geneva on 22 Dec 2023, says the risk of international spread of wild poliovirus remains since the actual spread of Type-1 Wild Poliovirus (WPV1)
Courts in the United Kingdom and Lahore are “involved in a complex legal tussle” to decide what should happen to the siblings of Sara Sharif, whose death sparked an international manhunt, BBC reported. Sara Sharif’s body was discovered at her home in Woking, southern England, on August 10. A post-mortem examination found she had sustained “multiple and extensive injuries” over a long period. The day before Sara’s body was found, her father, 41-year-old Urfan Sharif, her step-mother Beinash Batool, 29,