SPARC’s flagship report ‘The State of Pakistan’s Children 2011’, released the other day, covers 15 years and encompasses all major sectors of child rights, including education, health, child labour and violence against children and juvenile injustice. The report highlights the debilitating state of child rights in the country during 2011 while suggesting recommendations for the government to take appropriate measures to improve the situation. Presenting the major findings of the report, research officers, Ms Maheen Shaiq, Zohair Waheed and Hamza Hasan of SPARC, shared that various child-related issues in the country had been ignored by successive governments. However, there was room for improvement as concerted efforts could be institutionalised through political will to protect the rights of children in the country, they observed. “Ratification of the Optional Protocol of the UNCRC on Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography, adoption of the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Act 2011 and amendments in the Frontier Crimes Regulation 1901 are some of the major achievements in 2011. The challenge, however, is implementing the above laws at the grassroots level. Moreover, bureaucratic delays in the espousal of various children-related bills need to be addressed to improve the status of child rights,” the report observed. “In 2011, floods and militancy in some of the most underdeveloped parts of the country presented new challenges to child rights activists and development organisations working for children. For instance, the floods alone affected 4.8 million people, half of them children (an estimated 500,000 below the age of five). Delays in the emergency response by the government prevented donor organisations from operating independently in the affected areas, which caused delays in the transfer of relief aid,” it said.
Children: The missing agenda
