A FEW days ago, on Nov 20, we celebrated Universal Children’s Day. Every year on this anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we take steps forward and back and reflect on the state of the children in the world.

In Pakistan, we have made significant progress in recent years thanks to the government’s leadership and partnerships with civil society organisations that have the will to strengthen child rights in the country.

We have, for example, reached together the MDG targets for drinking water and sanitation; millions of children have been vaccinated against preventable diseases; and hundreds of thousands of mothers have been trained in correct feeding practices for their children.

Pakistan remains an unfair place for disadvantaged children.

It is important to celebrate successes, but despite these and many other major advances, let us not close our eyes to the fact that Pakistan, like most countries in the world, still remains a deeply unfair place for the poorest and most disadvantaged children.

When we design and implement our programmes for children together and when we try to improve the legal framework for them and their general standing in society, we should always keep in mind that it is not enough to treat all children equally. Children are not born into equal circumstances, neither in terms of their socio-cultural background, nor in terms of their economic situation, nor in terms of their gender and health situation at birth.

Many children and their families need our special attention, as well as extra support and care from society just to reach a point where they can have equal chances in life. We can only be fair if we make sure that all children can thrive and have the same chances in life. We want to be fair to them and that is why we in Unicef are launching a public awareness campaign called #FightUnfair.

The campaign focuses on the need to be equity-driven in everything we do for children, at the global level and in this country. Let me give you some examples on the importance of the equity approach:

The country’s polio programme has now shifted its focus from giving the widest vaccination coverage possible to reaching those children who are continuously missed in vaccinations amongst the high-risk population to close the immunity gap.

This is a perfect example of an intervention which is not only fair to a group of disadvantaged children, but that also shows that in the end society as a whole will benefit from caring for children who don’t have the same chances in life. Finding and vaccinating these continuously missed children will leave the virus with nowhere to go.

Ever since a shift in the polio programme has taken place the number of polio cases has gone down significantly, so that we have now a realistic chance to eliminate polio from Pakistan for good.

Another equity-related problem where the government, Unicef and other partners need to intensify their efforts is birth registration. In Pakistan, only one-third of children under five have had the fact of their birth registered. It is not fair that, to date, almost two-thirds of the children in this country have been left out.

Apart from the fundamental right to a name and identity, birth registration also provides a ‘passport to protection’ for children, ensuring that the latter benefit from special protections granted to them by the Constitu­tion and the laws of Pakistan, ie protection from child marriage, child labour, and, for children in conflict with the law, protection from being treated as adults in the criminal justice system.

When it comes to equitable access to public services, children who are not registered do not even figure in public administration considerations when planning the delivery of the same. Only when children ‘get into the picture’ will it be possible to include them in the equitable provision of public services for them.

While the number of out-of-school children in Pakistan has decreased over the past 10 years, there are still more than 6.1 million children aged five to nine years who are out of school. The factors that hinder enrolment, retention and completion of schooling include a lack of schools in remote areas and of qualified teachers and resources, long distances from home to school, conflict and insecurity and gendered norms including early marriage.

We need to continue our efforts to provide a basic education to those children who are disadvantaged because of their economic situation, because of the remoteness of their villages or because they are girls. And again, this will not only grant these children their basic right to education it will also be an important factor in the further development of Pakistan.

Children are our future. Let us treat them fairly. Let us fight unfairness together — Fight Unfair.

The writer is Unicef representative in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2015