Summary "Children Protection Bill" with more detailed legislation to be presented in the NA soon.
Dunya News Report (Madiha Fareed)
ISLAMABAD- Senate Committee on Law and Justice passed The Un-attended Orphans (Rehabilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2013. The Bill was passed unanimously with minor amendments during a meeting at the parliament house.
The bill was introduced by Pakistan People’s Party (PPPP) senator Karim Ahmed Khawaja in 2013, but it did not manage to get the attention of the house until senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani gave a green signal for the bill to be debated in the house. Senator Khawaja said that the state is responsible for looking after and protecting children. He alleged that the government has deliberately delayed the bill.
The bill extends to Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), and requires the government to formulate a national policy within 30 days of the commencement of the act and establish a Welfare Fund with an initial grant of Rs.50 million for effective implementation of the National Policy.
Senator Rabbani said that “it’s a state’s responsibility to take care of its parentless children or children of unknown parentage and a failure in this regard, is a failure of state as whole”. He added, Pakistan needs to take solid steps to attend to its unattended children and ensure for them the rights of education, health and protection.
Secretary Ministry of Law and Justice, Justice Reza Khan announced that “Children Protection Bill” will be presented in the national Assembly soon that will contain more detailed legislations.
Pakistan is among the countries which are most dangerous for children. In December 2014, 144 school children were slaughtered in aterrorist attack in a school in Peshawar.
InInterior Sindh, in 2016, 168 children have reportedly died of malnutrition in 48 days so far, the statistics from previous years are even more frightening.
Last Year, reports of massive child abuse in Kasur, a district of Punjab, surfaced that shook the whole country. Children between ages 8-15 were repeatedly molested, raped and filmed. Over 400 such films were retrieved, that were used to blackmail the victims’ families. The horrible situation was found going on for years. The suspects were later acquitted over “lack of evidence”.
The shameful truth of pedophilia and child sexual abuse in the country was also highlighted in a 2014 documentary “Pakistan’s Hidden Shame”. The documentary film unearthed the shocking reality of small boys from poor families being abused in our society.
According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report, Pakistan ranks 3rd in the world in child and forced labor. The report said 25 million children are not going to school out of which 15 million are earning for their families through various forms of labor work.
Pakistan is also one of the last 2 remaining countries along with Afghanistan that still have polio virus and children are at risk of being disabled for the rest of their lives.
Given the present condition of children in country, a lot of efforts, and persistent ones are required to safeguard the rights of children. Children are the future of any country, and our situation of children’s unending miseries paints a horrible picture of the future.
