islamabad - Pakistan People’s Party Senator Farhatullah Babar Friday called for compiling complete data on child abuse in consultation will all stakeholders for planning to protect the children.
Addressing a seminar organised by Child Protection Commissioner of the Wafaqi Mohtasib (federal ombudsman) here, he said the National Commission on the Rights of the Child Act had been passed but worryingly the Commission had still not been set up to address issues in child protection and prevent their abuse.
The seminar was attended by parliamentarians, chairperson national commission on the status of women, representatives of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the United Nations Children’s Fund, National Commission for Human Rights and civil society organizations. Former Law Minister S M Zafar also participated through video conferencing.
Farhatullah Babar said that children were also victims of kidnapping and sexual abuse, early marriage and swarah (forced marriage), exploitative domestic labour, unattended orphans, in jails without fault, some even on death row, statelessness as in case of Afghan refugees, caught in internal displacement and armed conflict and neglected in indigenous communities like Kalash.
“There is however no credible data base on the victims of various types of abuses and the steps taken to bring the perpetrators to justice which was critical to plan for available to plan for ending child abuse,” he said.
During the universal periodic review of human rights Pakistan promised the UN to prepare the core document but the pledge has not been kept, he added.
Acknowledging some positive measures, Babar said that crimiZnalising child pornography, raising age limit for criminal liability were commendable but regretted that the Bills passed by the Senate on unattended orphans and domestic service had not yet been passed by the National Assembly.
He said the UN Committee’s recommendations about preventing the use of children in armed conflicts, madressa (religious seminary) reforms and prevention of recruitment of students by armed groups and signing the protocols t the Convention on the Rights of the Child also remained un-implemented.
Babar proposed the year 2018 should be declared as the ‘Year of the Child Rights’ and the National Commission on the Status of Women tasked to plan the year long celebrations. “Children are made to disappear before they are subjected to various forms of abuses and violence,” he said.
He added: “Children will be doomed to this fate as long as the citizens continued to disappear without trace and perpetrators of the crime were not brought to justice.”
The senator said if “we have to end child abuse we must also end enforced disappearances from the country, bring the perpetrators of enforced disappearances to justice and reform the criminal justice system.”