THIS country’s children make the news for unfortunate reasons. At the core of their plight is the state’s inability to recognise that child rights violations indicate administrative failure and a rejection of our young ones’ existence. The Anti-Kidnap for Ransom Unit of the Lahore Organised Crime Unit and the Azad Kashmir police recently rescued 29 kidnapped children and youth from Kotli district in AJK. Most of the victims, aged between 14 and 20 years, were abducted from the Data Darbar area in Lahore by a child-trafficking cartel. Each victim endured repeated sexual abuse. While news about raids surfaces frequently, it does not lessen fears about our children’s safety across Pakistan. Despite child abuse being a rampant curse for decades, prospects of a protected youth and childhood, with guaranteed rights and freedom from exploitation and neglect, remain bleak.

Undoubtedly, the time to identify and plug the many glitches in social protection policies, such as the easy provision of birth certificates for newborns, is now. Without a basic databank of children, all measures by the state are doomed to fail. This is particularly true for Punjab, where the state of poor children appears woefully grim. According to a report, in 2023, a total of 2,633 were reported missing in the country. In Punjab, some 20 children were sexually assaulted and killed. Unreported cases would make the numbers much higher. A broken economy provides an enabling environment for these ugly excesses, making it necessary to establish cross-sectoral efforts to boost education and generate income for poor families. International engagement is necessary to ensure that global humanitarian parameters are being observed. The courts, too, must adopt a more severe view of crimes against children so that investigators ensure thorough evidence and prosecution to raise conviction rates. Otherwise justice for the abused and the implementation of laws will not be attained. The state must shield its future generations.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2024