Child rights in Pakistan

Child rights in Pakistan
Arshad Mahmood
Having a look at the state of child rights in Pakistan in light of indicators like Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or the benchmarks set under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the results are depressing and we still lag far behind in fulfilling our promises to our children. Last year’s floods added to the already complex challenges of conflict, terrorism, the appalling state of the health and education sectors, and lack of legislative initiatives combined with poor or no implementation of existing laws.

The conflict in northern parts of the country, the wave of terrorism in the country in general and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in particular and the continued political instability and civil unrest in Balochistan have all combined to put the rights of the child at stake. Children in Pakistan continue to be affected by militancy. They have been the innocent victims of terrorist attacks carried out all across the country. In an unprecedented move by the militants, school buses were targeted in the recent past and as a result many children were injured or lost their lives.

This is surprising that there is some evidence of a decreasing trend in child labour globally. Unfortunately however, in Pakistan there has been an increase in child labour. One of less acknowledged but potentially worst form of child labour that is rampant in the country is child domestic labour. During the last one and a half year we got more evidence of the way child domestic labourers are treated in the privacy of homes and the abuses they suffer. 15 cases of torture to death of child domestic labourers were reported by the media from January 2010 to date starting from the famous Shazia Masih case in Lahore. Similarly, a number of cases of torture and serious injuries resulting in lifelong disabilities were also reported by media and child rights groups. Punjab, being the province from where the highest number deaths and disabilities through torture have been reported, must respond to the situation immediately. Similarly, the federal government should also realize its responsibility and check the menace of child domestic labour in federal capital, if not in the whole country.

Violence against children is widespread; at homes, in the streets and institutions and in the criminal justice system. The unfortunate and terrible incidents like the Sialkot lynching of two brothers and rape of a 13 year old girl in Wah Cantonment police station are some of the horrible examples of increasing trends of violence against children. There are other shocking examples. The indoctrination and use of children as suicide bombers, torture of child domestic labourers, and physical punishment of students, sometime with fatal results, are some of the ways that children are treated by this society. Other incidents of violence have been covered in the media on almost a daily basis. The atrocities committed against children take many forms but the perpetrators are almost always adults in their role as guardians, teachers, relatives and even law enforcement personnel; the very people that children should be most safe with.

The criminal justice system for children is a challenge. Lack of a concerted effort, due to absence of a statutory body for children, has resulted in failure to include international and national standards in the training curricula of judicial, police, prison, probation and related government agencies. A lack of awareness among various actors of the criminal justice system about the rights of the child and their respective obligations has constantly been observed, due to which children have to face hardships in a criminal justice procedures.

Despite acknowledging the draconian nature of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) both by the Prime Minister and the President in their respective addresses in the National Assembly’s inaugural session and to the nation on independence day, FCR is still a reality in the Federally administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and a number of people including innocent women and children are in prisons under its collective responsibility clause.

Pakistan is now a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Being Party to the ICCPR further obligates the State to ensure all the inhabitants have equal civil and political rights which is not the case as for as the people of FATA are concerned. The issue of FCR should be resolved and Article 247 (Administration of Tribal Areas) of the Constitution should be amended in order to bring Tribal Areas into the mainstream.

Similarly, at the policy level no concrete steps were taken for the implementation of the Concluding Observations and Recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on Pakistan’s last Periodic Report which had called for, among other steps, approval of a national child protection policy and related laws, increase in resource allocation for health, education and child protection, establishment of a national commission on the rights of children and inclusion of child rights in the training curricula of all professional training colleges and academies.

Following the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the Concurrent Legislative List has been deleted, leading to confusion within the relevant ministries, departments as well as among other stakeholders on the legislative competency of the federal legislature and existence of coordination mechanism at the national level on the subject of children. The civil society wholeheartedly, welcomes the 18th Amendment and has already started actively coordinating with concerned provincial government departments for related legislative and other initiatives however, we cannot ignore the reality that the devolution does not absolve the federal government and federal legislature of its responsibilities towards children in light of the Constitution and Pakistan’s international obligations being Party to the CRC and other UN and ILO Conventions.

To conclude, the need to protect children has never been greater. We all need to work together to ensure that the rights of children enshrined in the Constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Islamic injunctions are honored. The government and the parliament need to prioritize child rights and immediately pass all the pending legislation. There should be proper budgetary allocation for all children related initiatives, a national commission should be established to work for the promotion and protection of the rights of the child and ensure implementation of Pakistan’s national and international obligations. A plan of action should be adopted for the implementation of the CO&R of the UN Committee. The plight of children in Pakistan can be improved on a sustainable basis by taking these initiatives. The key, however, is political will.