Note on Child and Women Abuse in Pakistan EVERY day we keep reading news of blatant child rights violations

across the country. Children are faced with a number of issues, including lack of a comprehensive legal framework to protect them, particularly the issue of internal trafficking of children, child domestic labour, child sexual abuse, corporal punishment, to name a few areas.
This is despite the fact that Pakistan is the sixth among the world community and first Islamic country to sign and ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and has also ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Pornography. The budgetary allocation for child protection is a few hundred thousand rupees and whatever little bit of initiatives we see are initiated by national or international NGOs. Street Children. A report issued by the society for the protection of the rights of child said that 80 per cent of the 1.5 million street children in this country are sexually abused. There are more grim figures. SPARCs State of Pakistan`s Children 2010 report says that in the first six months of 2010 there were over 1,200 cases of sexual abuse of children documented across Pakistan; 55 of these minors were murdered after being assaulted. The data shows there has been a rise in the number of children being abused compared to the corresponding period in 2009. Factors such as tough economic conditions, military operations and last year`s floods are said to have contributed to the rise in the number of children on the streets Domestic Workers The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) describes domestic child workers as victims of exploitation behind closed doors. Society for the protection and rights of child (SPARC) launched a report The State of Pakistans Children 2010. It says that last year, 10 children doing domestic work in homes were subjected to violence and killed by their employers. Another eight were brutally tortured. In June, International Labour Organization adopted Convention (189) on Decent Work for Domestic Worker. Pakistan voted for the law but it has to ratify it. Technically, international conventions check child labour and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Pakistan is also a signatory, makes it compulsory for member states to observe the rights spelt out

The families of the children are poor and deprived and invariably large. In a recent report, the ADB has highlighted the fact that since the beginning of 2011 the cost of food has increased by 10 per cent, reducing 6.94 million Pakistanis to poverty. In Quetta, two parents sold their child for

a bag of wheat flour. Thus the parents believe that their child is better off when working in the home of a person who provides food for work. It is worrisome that the little progress made towards bringing new laws for the protection of children stalled after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. It said despite the frequent incidents of child abuse and honour killing of girls, the government was not interested in taking steps to stop them. Samar Minallah talked about effects of parallel justice systems and customs like jirga , panchaiyat , vani and swara on the lives of girls. She termed Vani, Swara , and Sung Chatti as culturally-sanctioned violence against girls. In 2010, she said 29 cases of Vani have been reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. All these evil practices are applied for resolving land, water, murder, and property disputes by giving young daughters in unceremonious wedlock.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/10/non-fiction-when-numbers-take-on-human-forms.html http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/29/children-face-uncertain-future-says-report.html
Write about governments measure to alleviate the street children misery Women Abuse in Pakistan

a global survey by Thomson Reuters Foundation of perceptions regarding violence against women had ranked Pakistan third, with Afghanistan making it to the top of the list and Congo taking up second place. Pakistan ranked third largely on the basis of cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women. These include acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse. A report compiled by aurat foundation counts 8000 incidents of violence against woman last year, while many incidents were not reported to the police. While around 8,000 incidents of violence against women were witnessed last year in the country, many incidents were never reported to the police, said an annual report on violence against women launched here on Tuesday. The report mentioned that 1,993 women, including 557 in the name of honour, were murdered in the country last year. As many as 633 women committed suicide, 32 women were targeted in acid attacks and 38 women were targeted in stove burning incidents. Besides, 2,236 women were abducted and 926 women were raped.

violence against women, as other violence between individuals and groups, even nations, are based on power structures where we seem to believe that the strong has the right to be in charge. A bully in the home can beat up, or order around, his wife and children, and servants if he has any, and somehow, we seem to accept it. Religion, as part of culture, is many times used to justify social and economic systems, including the power structures where men are ranked as first class human beings and women relegated to the lower slots. However, religion as such is never on the side of the oppressor; it is on the side of the oppressed.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/13/honour-killings-2.html http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/International/16Jun-2011/Pakistan-3rd-most-dangerous-country-for-women http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-englishonline/Opinions/Columns/25-Nov-2010/Womens-difficult-lives

Note on poverty Issue in Pakistan

POVERTY has been a challenge to Pakistan since the beginning. Until the late 1990s

Pakistan did not have an indigenously developed poverty alleviation programme. Forced by the rising number of people falling below the poverty line, work began on the development of a Poverty Reduction Strategy document. This was in 1999. Since that time, Pakistan has developed at least three poverty reduction strategies. But has not been able to curb it effectively.
This was for two reasons. First, measures were of short duration which either ended with the dissolution of the particular government or the completion of its tenure. Second, there has been exploitation of the poor by the elite class. The situation is worse today. According to the World Bank report, the 10 per cent elite class in Pakistan accounts for 43.02 per cent of total national income, the 30 per cent middle class accounts for 34.8 per cent in national income, while the 60 per cent poor group accounts just for 22 per cent of total national income. This wealth accumulation trend in Pakistan has shaken the fabric of Pakistani society and has been pushing thousands into the poverty trap in the face of skyrocketing inflation. According to poverty parameter MPI (Multi Poverty Index) tells us that Pakistan has 88 million poor, and deprivation in schooling enrolment is 30 per cent. While the official statistics show only 33 per cent poverty.

According to Syed Adil Gilani, the chairman of Transparency International Pakistan, Corruption is the root cause of poverty. It is corruption that has been eating up both government institutions and the masses. In developed countries airlines, railways and power-producing agencies are income-generating institutions, but these are running in loss in Pakistan. The government, instead of giving relief to the poor and taking measures to curb poverty by establishing industries and punishing corrupt elements, is rather hurting the masses by increasing difficulties for them by increasing prices of oil and petroleum products and increasing the prices of electricity.

These strategies were conceived as instruments for incorporation in the countrys economic policy with the aim to alleviate poverty. The outcome of these strategies clearly establish that meeting the basic needs of education and health of the countrys poorest continues to be superseded by other objectives such as the construction of showpiece projects, other non-productive expenditures, the insatiable requirements of the military establishment and obliging the donors to receive the much needed dollars for budgetary support.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/17/poverty-democratic-govts-response.html http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/31/the-living-dead.html http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/17May-2011/Programmes-for-poverty-reduction