This was the crux of views expressed by speakers at a one-day national conference on “Violence Against Children in Pakistan”, which was jointly organised on Thursday by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of Children and the Human Rights Study Centre, University of Peshawar.
“Working children face violence at the hands of police, who beat them in streets, as if they are not human being and are inferior to other children,” said Marie Wernhem, a representative of the Consortium for Street Children, UK.
According to her, poverty is the main reason which forces the working children to act as commercial sex workers in Islamabad and elsewhere in Pakistan, which not only affects them psychologically, but also puts them at the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS.
She said that children working in automobile workshops were exposed to electric shocks as punishment when they got tired after long-hours of duty. This kind of violence hindered their progress for the rest of the their lives, she added.
She was of the view that teachers, police, parents, prison officials and people at large should be sensitised on the rights of the children, so they could be saved from being stigmatised in future.
Nobody, she said, had been prosecuted for violence against the children in Pakistan so far, which was an example of the lacklustre attitude of the government.
Alf Arne Ramslien, charge d’affairs, Royal Norwegian Embassy, informed the audience that they had signed an agreement with the government of Pakistan for supporting primary education in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). He said his government would provide Rs400 million for that four-year project.
“We are also going to sign an agreement with the NWFP government for supporting the Primary Education Programme in the province,” Mr Ramslien said.
Former NWFP minister Qari Roohullah Madni, speaking on the occasion, highlighted the issue in the religious perspective. He said that Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) had laid special emphasis on safeguarding the rights of the children and had directed that they should be treated with love and affection. There was no discrimination between a girl and boy in the Islamic teachings, he said.
Manizeh Bano of Sahil, an Islamabad-based NGO, deplored that the working children were at razor’s edge at workplaces. They were sodomised, raped and molested by the people who were known to them, but the victims could do nothing owing to lack of resources, she said.
She said that the children, who fell prey to victimisation, were either those ignored at their homes, which forced them to runaway from their homes, or those doing petty jobs.
These children, she said, always felt ashamed of telling any thing to people, especially when their confidence shattered, society did not give any importance to them.
She urged parents to provide the children with education, food and shelter, and to give them due attention to protect them against violence. She told the audience that freedom of expression, singing and gossiping were their basic rights guaranteed by all the international conventions on child rights, to which Pakistan was a signatory.
Bushra Gohar of the Human Resource Management and Development Centre said that there were 12 million working children in Pakistan, for which the whole country was responsible. She held the education system responsible for the menace of child labour.
Arshad Mahmood of Sparc said that the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000, had not been implemented in its letter and spirit. He proposed that the presiding officers of juvenile courts should specify at least one day in a week for hearing cases of the juvenile offenders.
NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, who was the chief guest of the function, said that the government had notified the juvenile system rules in May last year. He said Rs25 million had been allocated for the establishment of borstals in Bannu and Peshawar.