KARACHI: Detained children exposed to abuses, workshop told
By Faiza Ilyas
KARACHI, Feb 4: There are huge social and infrastructural gaps that need to be filled if we really want to give a future to the ‘future’ of the country. Inadequate public awareness on child rights and restrained access to legal representation are the major factors that make children more vulnerable to abuse at the hands of law enforcement agencies.
Mehnaz Malik, the project leader of British Pakistan Law Council (BPLC) Project Advocate, stated this while opening the second BPLC three-day workshop. It aims to train 34 more lawyers who have joined the project network to provide free legal representation to children in detention.
Elaborating upon the juvenile justice system scenario, Ms Malik said there were enough safeguards in the law for children’s protection, but they were not being implemented. The major hindrances were low public awareness especially among government officials about child rights, and limited access to legal aid caused by poverty.
“For majority of children in detention whose cases are pending, there is no legal representation as they either belong to poor families or have nobody to rely on.
In fact, the state, under the law, is supposed to provide free legal aid to the minor offenders, but the reality on the ground is different. Without any legal rights, the detained children in police stations and jails are at a higher risk of abuse,” she said.
The rehabilitation of such children, she said, was a major issue especially in Karachi where there was no 24-hour rehab centre for them. She feared that these children could contract Aids because of the hostile environment they lived in. Many were found to have self-inflicted injuries in jails and police stations.
Informing about an analysis of the cases taken up in Lahore and Karachi, she said the most common charge against children was of theft, followed by narcotics and possession of illicit arms. Under-12 children were also found detained in Camp District Jail, Lahore.
About the mission of the Project Advocate, she said it was to make the legal system accessible to the poor and the disadvantaged, particularly children, by promoting pro bono work among the younger generation, especially lawyers. So far, under the project, 186 cases had been taken up in Karachi and Lahore and release of 76 children had been secured using a network of 40 lawyers.
The workshop will cover laws and procedures relating to juveniles, and provide legal expertise from international lawyers. With the present inclusion of 34 lawyers, the number of BPLC project lawyers working in Lahore and Karachi now stands at 100.
Four international legal experts will coordinate the workshop: Shiraz Aziz, a barrister at Mitre House Chambers in London, Travers Sinanan, a higher court solicitor-advocate, Veronique Marquis, a lawyer at Simmons and Simmons, and Kiran Chaudhry, legal counsel to Resham Textile Industries Ltd, Lahore.
The two-year project launched last year is managed by the Law Society of England and Wales in partnership with the BPLC and has received funding from the European Commission, British Commonwealth Office and Law Society Charity.
