BEING a child in this society should not be so hard. But recurrent reports of child abuse — from burying girl children alive to torturing a 12-year-old domestic worker to death for consuming her employers’ chocolate — point to a pervasive malaise. The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights has, yet again, expressed concern over the escalation in cases of child abduction, murder, rape and trafficking across the country. In 2024, according to the Sindh police chief, some 289 kidnapping cases were registered, with 266 incidents of runaway children; 37 children in Karachi were killed, and there were 209 complaints of child abuse, involving 117 boys and 96 girls. The child kidnapping statistics from Punjab are even more unsettling: the crime rose from 2,339 cases in 2022 to 2,448 in 2023. If such dire circumstances do not evoke greater action from the state and the citizenry, what will?

The government knows what to do: campaigning for better parenting, ending patterns of family violence, creating safe school and madressah conditions, and establishing a trained front-line force tasked with rescuing children in high-risk settings. But it seems hesitant to accept that the sickness requires active treatment. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Pakistan should not show such prolonged lethargy. Lawmakers need to spring into action to ensure that our children do not suffer in silence, that they have agency, respect and safety. Child rights are mandatory for a humane society; childhood trauma results in lifelong susceptibility to mental illness, drug use, stress, poor focus and violence, making individuals inept at adapting their emotional reactions to people and situations. Sadly, progress has been negligible because no government has kept pace with the scale of the problem. As Nelson Mandela said: “Safety and security don’t just happen; they are the result of collective consensus and investment.”

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2025