LAHORE - Speakers at a consultative workshop have stressed the need for devising effective strategy to meet the new targets regarding child rights set under Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.
Children Advocacy Network- CAN Pakistan and Pakistan Development Alliance (PDA) arranged the event at a local hotel yesterday.
The speakers urged government to implement international obligations under United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) and newly adopted global development agenda.
They urged giving children’s right to protection from all form of abuse and exploitation through development and adoption of comprehensive child protection policy, devising plan of action to prevent children from violence, abuse and exploitation.
CAN Pakistan’s Program Coordinator Rashida Qureshi said sexual abuse was one of the most unsettling of children’s rights violations. Underreporting and lack of data limit understanding of the full extent of the problem, she said.
End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against children, she emphasized. She urged the government to develop strategic partnership with civil society organisations having experience to deal with the issues of violence against children, both at grass root as well as policy level, to meet the desired SDG target.
She also highlighted the issue of Birth Registration of Children’s and stressed to consider the Concluding Observations of Committee on the Rights of Child issues.
Child Rights Activist Iftikhar Mubarik urged measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour. He regretted that in recently promulgated
“The Punjab Restriction on Children’s Employment Act 2016” the contemporary form of domestic labour was not prohibited. He demanded inclusion of child domestic labour in the list of hazardous occupations and ban on this contemporary form of slavery.
Pakistan Development Alliance National Coordinator Ziaur Rehman urged the government to introduce policies to ensure that no one left behind. He urged measures for women and girls empowerment.