YESTERDAY marked Universal Children’s Day. Politicians reaffirmed their commitment to securing children’s rights, while carnivals and walks were organised throughout the country to commemorate the day the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Despite being a signatory to these declarations, which clearly state that a child is anyone below the age of 18 years, Pakistan has a long way to go before granting the full list of rights spelled out in the conventions. A large number of children are out of school and in the workforce — both formal and informal. However, as recently stated by a PTI lawmaker, the lack of data and surveys on the topic presents a challenge in implementing policies. In the early 2000s, a survey conducted by Unicef estimated that nearly 8m children under the age of 14 years were engaged in some form of labour, including brick kilns, carpet-weaving, agriculture, fishing, small-scale industries and domestic help. Another survey by FBR stated the number of working children in Pakistan was approximately 7pc of the total workforce.

The absence of strict laws and prevalence of contradictory laws leads to an ambiguous space which leaves room for abuse of the most vulnerable and helpless citizens of the state. Despite all this, we do not even have a nation-wide consensus on who is a child. The oft-cited Article 25-A of the Constitution, which makes it compulsory for governments to provide free education to all children from age five to 16, is usually used in arguments against the employment of children under 16. But when it comes to marriage, a child is anyone under the age of 18 in Sindh, and 16 in the rest of the country, despite the fact that even a CNIC is not issued until one has attained 18 years of age. When it comes to employment, Article 11 of the Constitution states that “no child below the age of 14 years shall be engaged in any factory or mine or any other hazardous employment”. This is corroborated by the Child Employment Act of 1991. But last year, Sindh passed the Prohibition of Employment of Children Act, which increased the minimum age for employment to 15, while 19 years is the minimum age for employment in hazardous professions. Before we can speak of the rights of the child, we should agree on who exactly is a child.

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2018