Nearly 6 percent of internet-using children aged 12–17 in Pakistan experienced technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse in the past year, predominantly via platforms like Snapchat and WhatsApp. In 85 percent of cases, the abusers were known to the child rather than strangers. Fear of community stigma, victim-blaming, and
Sometimes, far away in the night, a wolf howled. Then he came nearer and howled again. It was a scary sound. Laura knew that wolves would eat little girls.” — From Little House in the Big Woods. In her classical children’s book, Laura Ingalls Wilder used these words
In the present day, we hear about everything from children being eaten, sexually abused and murdered to cyberbullying, online predators, explicit content and the terrifying possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence. The dangers surrounding children seem to have multiplied beyond anything previous generations had to contend with. And
Last Sunday at around 11pm, I went to a restaurant about two miles from my home with my wife and children for dinner. As we sat waiting for our meal, two little girls, who appeared to be between 10 and 12 years old, approached our table carrying crunchy
I. Understanding child protection Child protection, as generally understood under various federal and provincial acts of Pakistan, refers to the prevention and response to violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect experienced by children. It encompasses the systems, services, and legal mechanisms that are put in place to identify children
LULLED into a sense of false security by its own denial and apathy, Pakistan is a long way from achieving tangible solutions to the curse of child abuse. The state’s refusal to address the presence of this scourge, and the lifelong traumas associated with it, is a ticking
When the most vulnerable members of a nation are repeatedly subjected to sexual violence, torture and murder, the crisis extends far beyond law and order. It becomes a moral failure. The past week has delivered two such horrifying reminders. In Sargodha, a seven-year-old girl was reported to have
CHILD abuse is so prevalent that the UN ranked Pakistan as the least safe country for children. Even so, more than five years after the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Act, 2020 — Pakistan’s first national child protection law — central provisos, including the agency for rapid alerts
There is something deeply wrong with how easily Pakistan has learned to absorb horrific news. Sahil, an organisation working towards developing an environment free from child abuse and neglect, has recently released figures revealing that 3,630 cases of child abuse were reported in 2025, which is an 8
JUST when we thought Pakistan had made meaningful progress and the debate on child marriage was nearly settled, a spanner has been thrown into the spokes of reform. Four years after the Federal Shariat Court’s ruling in 2021 that setting a minimum marriage age is not in contradiction
As the international world processes the heinous amounts of child sexual abuse data released from the Epstein files, at home the National Cyber Crimes Investigation Agency of FIA has uncovered a major network involved in the sexual exploitation of children via blackmail. A prime suspect, hailing from Murree,
Pakistan’s sixth and seventh periodic review before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), held in Geneva on January 15-16, 2026, marked an important moment of reflection and accountability, examining progress made since the previous review in 2016. More than a formal reporting obligation,