LAHORE: Children’s rights face a grim situation in Punjab just like other areas of the country and part of the issue lies in the fact that the legal framework enacted for children has many contradictions while there is no apex body to monitor the situation.

Child rights activist Iftikhar Mubarik stated this on Friday in a seminar organised by the Child Rights Movement (CRM), an alliance of about 100 organisations fighting for the rights of children.

He said although the state had signed and ratified different laws and conventions, some of these were still not being implemented and those enacted or partially implemented were contradictory to other such laws.

For example, he added, the Punjab Free and Compulsory Education Act 2014 specified the child’s age for free education as five to 16 years.

“Two years later, the Prohibition of Child Labour at Brick Kilns 2016 specified the worker’s age to be not less than 14 years. The Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children Act 2004 defines child as anyone under 18 but the Punjab Child Marriage Restriction Act gave the boy’s age to be at least 18 and the girl’s to be at least 16 years for marriage.”

These are serious contradictions and loopholes in the laws while there were no laws that dealt with child domestic labour, said Mubarik.

“The issues and challenges are many but some of these include unavailability of children’s data – essentially falling under domain of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, but this is not surprising since even the last census was done 18 years ago.

There is a dearth of child protection policy at provincial level. Except Sindh, no other province has legally criminalised corporal punishment, there is little to no implementation of international laws including sustainable development goals, UN laws and conventions and generalised scheme of preferences (GSP) Plus conventions. There are also serious issues of probation and the juvenile justice system that need to be addressed.”

Iftikhar Mubarik said an apex body was missing to see that children receive their rights.

“Because a child has different claims from the state, including health, education, prevention of child labour and other areas, they fall in different departments, including the health department, education department and labour department and they are not linked with each other where children are concerned,” Mubarik said, concluding that a bill was passed at the federal level recently for forming the National Commission of the Rights of Children but this body was yet to be formed and steps had not taken for its for its implementation.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2017