SPARC launches state of Pakistani Children Report: Children continue to die of starvation in Thar
HYDERABAD: Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) launched its annual State of Pakistan’s Children Report at Hyderabad Press Club Tuesday. The event was attended by state functionaries, human/child rights activists, media personnel representing major print and electronic media houses, officials from national and international NGOs and donor agencies and most importantly children from SPARC’s Center for Street Children in Hyderabad.
The report quoted various national and international sources to reveal that 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. 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.
With regard to child health in 2015, 54 cases of polio were reported from different parts of the country in comparison to 269 from the previous year, a positive and hopeful way forward. 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. The Under Five Mortality Rate (U5MR) 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.
The report also revealed that on the front of child labor the absence of an up-to-date database of child laborers is a major hindrance in formulating policies and legislation that will work towards the elimination of child labor in Pakistan. Moreover, there is an urgent need to ensure the rights of these workers and to ban the employment of children in home-based industry and the domestic sector.
The report also identified the increasing prevalence of violence against children in the country by presenting statistics regarding child marriages, honor killings and child sexual abuse etc in the country. According to the report, the total number of child sexual abuse cases stood at 3,768 cases in 2015; a rate of 10 cases of child sexual abuse every day. It is disheartening to see that only after the extreme tragedy in Kasur, did the government take serious action to protect the rights of children by enacting legislation. Furthermore, approximately 21% of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18 while 40 cases of acid attacks were reported to the Acid Survivors Foundation. Those who addressed the ceremony included Kashif Bajeer national manager of SPARC, Dr. Ashothama Sindh coordinator of HRCP, M.Parkash chairman Pakistan Minority Commission, Zahid Thebo manager SPARC, Quratul Ain and Munir Bhatti deputy director Social Welfare department Sindh who was chief guest.
