09 November 2004	Tuesday	25 Ramazan 1425

PESHAWAR, Nov 8: A report on the status of children in the country draws a bleak picture of the condition in which the young are livingand what could lie in store for them if steps are not taken to protect their rights.

'The State of Pakistan's Children 2003', prepared by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc), an NGO, says that the state of children in the country is not going to improve until a new legislation to protect the rights of the children is adopted and enforced.

More than a decade has passed since Pakistan signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) but the situation on the ground has not changed a bit, says the report.

Sparc, which is also a member of the steering committee on the UN General Assembly's Special Session on Children, had also presented an alternative report on the state of children in Pakistan at a meeting of the committee last year.

The report was critical of Pakistan's failure in promoting and implementing the rights of the child.

Before Pakistan ratified the UNCRC, only the provinces of Punjab and Sindh had any laws for protection of children, out of which only one law, the Sindh Children's Act 1955, was partially implemented, the Sparc report said.

The NWFP and Balochistan did not have any laws for protecting children, the report added.

While elaborating on the juvenile justice situation in Pakistan before the UN committee, Sparc said that the introduction of the JJSO was commendable but its implementation remained sporadic.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: Sparc said that corporal punishment was widely practised in schools in the public sector as well as in Madressahs in violation of Article 19 of the UNCRC which enunciates that a child must be protected from all forms of aggression while in the care of parents and guardians.

The report says corporal punishment has almost been institutionalized and even has a legal sanction.

In this connection Sparc also drew the UN committee's attention towards Section 89 of the Pakistan Penal Code which empowers parents, teachers and other guardians to use corporal punishment as a means of correcting the behaviour of children.

Although those who inflict serious injuries on a child can be booked under Sections 323 and 325 of the PPC, yet these sections are never invoked practically, says the Sparc report.

CHILD LABOURERS: Sparc also told the committee that the majority of Pakistan's children was not attending school and instead was working as child labourers. An ILO survey in 1996 had found that there were 3.3 million child labourers in the country, the report added.

All the major anti-child labour programmes were being funded by foreign donors.

The government has also established 33 schools for the rehabilitation of child labourers.

The federal government, however, had a very poor showing as far as the National Policy and Action Plan was concerned, the report said.

The plan to combat child labour, which the government had approved in May 2000, has achieved nothing substantial, it added.

Not even the signing by the government of the ILO Convention on child labour in August 2001 could bring the objectives of the National Policy and Action Plan to fruition, Sparc said.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), while reviewing the promotion and protection of children's rights in Pakistan in its 34th session in Geneva in 2003 whose proceedings Sparc refers to in its report, expressed its regret that the country had not submitted the progress report requested by the committee back in 1994.

The committee also regretted that the development of training programmes to combat violence against children and to root out the menace of child labour were not addressed sufficiently.

The committee on the UNCRC showed its concern over the low level of awareness among the general public about the provisions and principles of the convention, the effectiveness of measures to attain the goal of primary education for all, particularly for girls, and the system of juvenile justice and its non-compatibility with the provisions of convention, Sparc's report said.