Pakistan has remained far from achieving its national and international commitments with regards to protecting and promoting the rights of children in the country.
Presenting an annual report "The State of Pakistan's Children 2015, National Manager of Society of Protection of Rights of Child (SPARC), Kashif Bajeer at the press club here on Tuesday, said the report provided a systematic overview of developments in various sectors in the year of 2015, including child rights, child labour, education, health, juvenile justice and violence against children.
A bleak picture painted by the report for the rights and protection of children, revealed that around 25 million children (aged 5-16 years) are out of school in Pakistan of which 13 million are girls. Pakistan also missed its targets set under the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals (Goal 2) 2015, Bajjeer added. He also highlighted the apathy of the government and political parties towards the vicious cycle of child labour and child rights coupled with emphasising on the lack of concrete measures towards enacting comprehensive child labour legislation in the aftermath of the 18th Amendment in the Constitution.
He further informed about the child health in 2015, 54 cases of polio were reported from different parts of the country in comparison to 269 from the previous year, which is a positive thing. However, children in Tharparkar, Sindh are still dying of acute malnutrition, starvation and lack of basic healthcare bringing the death toll of children to 143 by the end of 2015, he added.
According to the SPARC report, the situation is further compounded by the lack of infrastructure and teaching staff along with poor teaching standards in public schools which forces more children to drop out of schools. The National Manager of SPARK informed in his report that the under five mortality rate was reported to be around 86 deaths per 1000 births while the maternal mortality ratio remains constant at 276 deaths per 100,000 births. These statistics show that when it comes to the progress of the government health sector, increased proactive measures must be taken to eliminate the various health crises afflicting the children of Pakistan, he added. He also identified that the increasing prevalence of violence against children in the country by presenting statistics regarding child marriages, honour killings and child sexual abuse etc in the country.
In-charge Women Development Department (WDD) Syeda Qurat-ul-Ain Shah ,Coordinator Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Sindh Ashok Thama, Chairman District Hindu Panchayat (DHP) Hyderabad Advocate M Parkash, Rustam Ali Samejo and representatives from various walks of life including social activists, government officials and journalists attended the launching ceremony and shared their views.
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