KARACHI, Dec 21: A two-day national conference on child rights, being organized jointly by the UNICEF and the Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA), opens at a local hotel on Wednesday (Dec 26).

Punjab social welfare minister Shaheen Atiq-ur-Rehman, UNICEF representative Rana Syed, Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, and others will participate.

The participants will discuss various issues including displaced children (missing and street-children); special children (mentally and physically handicapped children); child abuse (physical and sexual), children and youth in jail (juvenile delinquents and children residing in jails with mothers).

Between 25 and 30 school-children, male and female both, will also participate in the child assembly that will also be held on the occasion and discuss various issues being faced by the children.

The incidents of violence against children are common and according to the data provided by the organisors over 410 children had been murdered since January 2001.

Other violent incidents include 142 rapes of minor girls out of which 15 were murdered, 206 minor boys were sodomised and 19 of them were murdered after the gory act, etc.

These incidents are only those which had been reported and could be just a tip of an iceberg as a vast majority of incidents, particularly those involving sexual violence, are not reported due to the social taboos.