KARACHI: A senior police official on Saturday said lack of implementation of legislation was the major hindrance in protecting vulnerable children of the country.

“Children being the most vulnerable and delicate part of the society need protection from violence, exploitation and abuse,” said Dr Sanaullah Abbasi, head of the Counter-Terrorism Depar­tment (CTD) of the Sindh Police, while giving a presentation at a programme on the rights of the child in Pakistan.

The programme was organised by the Sindh chapter of the Child Rights Movement (CRM) — a network of 88 child-focused organisations — at a hotel.

Mr Abbasi said millions of children suffer violence, exploitation and abuse of all forms in Sindh, due to poor implementation of existing laws.

“In Sindh, we don’t have any shelter home for street children. Last year, budgetary allocation for the child protection authority had lapsed and Sindh government even doesn’t have a call centre. Child protection authority offices have not been established in 29 districts of Sindh.”

He said minimum standard for child care institution has not been enforced; shortage of female medico-legal officers was still a challenge for the provincial government; and thousands of free-will marriages were being solemnised without any documentation of age.

The CTD chief said Sindh Child Protection Authority Act 2011 meant to provide for establishment of an authority to ensure rights of children in need of special protection measures, the body has finally been notified.

He said child protection units (CPUs) played a basic role in implementing laws, but in many districts, they were missing, and in the districts where they had been established those districts had poor resources and weaker role in implementing the law.

“Some 6.2 million children are not going to school.”

He said the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act-2013 could be an effective tool for booking offences as now child marriage was a cognizable offence under the law and free will under 18 years did not hold ground.

Besides, efforts should be made in determining the age at investigation level and statements of witnesses could be recorded in a non-coercive manner.

He informed the audience that district monitoring committees (DMCs) had been notified under the law but they had attracted feeble response and remained ineffective to put the law in practice at local level.

Expert and rights activist linked feudal mindset with the gender inequality and poor implementation of the law at the local level.

They were of the view that the Sindh government was active in passing such a good law, but the implementation was lacking.

Mr Abbasi said the national child labour prohibition laws did not cover agriculture, child domestic labour and informal sector in general.

Lacunas in such laws gave rise to exploitation and make litigation difficult against individuals involved in child and forced labour.

“National laws restrict the working age to 14 years, which is not in line with Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan.”

Besides, he added, domestic Workers Employment Rights Bill was still a pipe dream.

He said corporal punishment continued unabated as “over 70 per cent of teachers consider it useful”.

He referred to figures by Sahil organisation, which said child sexual incidents had increased by 12pc as compared to recorded cases in 2017.

“More boys than girls in the age groups 0-5 years and 11-15 years were sexually abused.”

Regarding the children of minorities, the senior police official said the average literacy rate among Christians in Punjab was 34pc, compared to the national average of 46.56pc.

“A study has revealed only 47pc of the minority women are educated vis-à-vis 57pc of the national average.”

Besides, there is higher infant mortality rate of 10.3pc among minority citizens as compared to the national ratio of 8.7pc.

He said rough estimates suggested (around) 1,000 forced conversions recorded annually.

Regarding the children of internally displaced persons, he said, more than 1.8 million people were displaced by insurgency, counter insurgency and other related violence.

“Only 42,400 people are residing in various camps.”

They included 31pc boys and 23pc girls, while 21pc and 22pc respectively were adult men and women under the age of 60.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2018