In Pakistan there are about 19.5 million children of the primary school age group, out of which 6.8 million are out of school and 60% of these are females, revealed a Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) representative in a media orientation on child rights organised by the Society on Wednesday.
SPARC is a non-profit independent organisation working for the promotion and protection of child rights in Pakistan since 1992. The orientation was aimed at briefing the print and electronic media on the child rights situation and sensitise them to play a responsible role in protecting and reporting abuse of child rights through their pen or camera lens.
Famous scholar and columnist Khurshid Nadeem, sharing his thoughts said that the state was a part of society, but in Pakistan people had been ignoring the main institution of society.
He said that violating child rights meant that society’s values were being ignored. He said that the crime rate, unrest, illiteracy and poverty were the result of the past negligence of children, because a person returned to society what he received from it in his childhood. He emphasised the need of calibrated joint efforts by the media to ensure that the rights of children were well taken care of by the state and society. Juvenile Justice and Child Labour National Manager Abdullah Khoso highlighted the situation of child rights in the post-18th amendment scenario. He shared that the civil society welcomed the 18th amendment but some questions still remained unanswered. He appreciated the insertion of Article 25-A in the law which made education free and compulsory for children of 5-16 years of age. He also showed concern at the non-implementation of the national and international laws regarding the promotion and protection of children’s rights, especially the minimum age of child labour, and minimum age of criminal responsibility. He said the government should establish a national commission for the rights of the children as there was no national body for the monitoring of child rights post-18th amendment.
Imtiaz Ahmed shared that an estimated 460,000 children under five years of age died each year in Pakistan, which was one of the highest rates in South Asia. Highlighting the educational problems of children, he suggested that budgetary allocations to education be substantially increased to meet the target of 7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2015, as committed in the National Education Policy 2009.
