Pakistan: Child Abuse on the Rise

'Pakistan: Child Abuse On The Rise'
by Halima Khan, Global Voices

There is a disturbing rise in child abuse cases in Pakistan. According to UNICEF Local Officer Shamshad Qureshi the reason is lack of proper law enforcement, negligence of parents and lack of awareness among the children and the society. He also said that the major factor for pedophilia in Pakistan was the easy access of people to children due to the negligence of parents.

Faheem Haider at Bangladesh Foreign Policy Blog discusses about the abuse of children and child workers in Pakistan and Bangladesh. He doesn’t mince as he shows us another very common side of child abuse:

“Unable to feed a growing family, desperate parents farm out their children to affluent homes to serve as servants, maids or nannies (child-keepers is the more proper sense in which these children are employed in those house-holds). These children then become, effectively, the wards of their employers and are often treated like personal property. The birth parents remain out of sight, perhaps hundreds of miles away, unaware that their babies are just so much flesh and burdened bone for the caprice and rubbed temper of their unbecomingly unkind lords.

Justice has been put aside for these children. They are the flotsam of unsettled poverty and the repackaged gifts of unhinged circumstances. Opportunity does not avail them; outcomes remain unmarked and the appropriate ends to which they might be working are unknown to them. Justice is for these children an inattentive teacher.”

Fatima Bhutto is not only a influential political heir but also a humanitarian. In a blog post in The Daily Beast she doesn’t leave much to be said by painting a grim picture of child abuse:

“The brutal murder of a 12-year-old maid, believed to have been killed by her powerful employer, has stunned the country. But from the corrupt government to the honor killing of a wealthy woman, the country's rich always get away with it.

Shazia Masih, a tiny 12-year-old who looked years younger than her age, was laid to rest last week after a Christian funeral at Lahore's Cathedral Church. She had been employed by the wealthy and influential former president of Lahore's Bar Association, and for a generous $8 a month she cleaned her employer's toilets, the cars that filled their suburban garage, and the filth that collected on the floors of their home.”

This YouTube video shows that a teacher of a government school abused a student as punishment but nobody did anything.

The term ‘child abuse’ covers a wide array of very diverse kinds of crimes subjected towards the minors. It signifies physical as well as mental pain. When an adult tries to use a child as a sex toy it is child abuse. When an adult tries to appease his labour needs at a lower cost it is also child abuse. When a child is exploited as a commodity and traded for monetary or non monetary produce it is child abuse. When an adult forces the child to push himself beyond his strength overlooking all health guidelines for children it is child abuse.

Pakistan is a country that does little in protecting its young worlds from the many horrors of child abuse that they are exposed to in and around the green pastures.