‘1,334 children reported kidnapped  or missing in city till July this year’

48 percent of abducted children were girls; Madadgar Helpline says provincial
governments not doing enough to address child protection concerns

Karachi

Cases of kidnapping of children and children going missing are rising at an alarming rate in the country, according to human rights and child rights lawyer Zia Awan.

He made this disclosure while addressing the media at his office at a press conference organised by the Madadgar Helpline. Parents and guardians of missing children were also present.

According to Awan, there were 1,334 cases of missing or kidnapped children up until July 2016 from January of the same year in Karachi. He said that while media attention had been diverted to Lahore and Punjab, Karachi had this large number of kidnapping cases.

Comparing the situation with 2015, Awan said that there was a rise in such unfortunate cases by 24 percent.

Giving the month-wise breakdown, he said that 173 children were reported kidnapped/missing in January 2016, 203 in March and 217 in July. This, he said, indicated that such cases occurred during the start of the school session after the winter vacation, the annual examinations and the summer vacation.

The next-of-kin of three children were present at the press conference, who gave a detailed account of their ordeal.

Noor Begum, a Bengali woman, said her son, Dilawar, had been missing since August 20 and there was nothing on his whereabouts thus far. Dilawar was working as a child labourer at a towel factory at Bilal Chowrangi, Orangi.

Asked if the family had any enmity with anyone, or any detractors, she said: “None at all.” She said that they searched for the child all over, but all their efforts went in vain. “We even went to search for him at the homes of relatives, both near and distant, but to no avail.

“We reported the matter to the police who promised to help. We contacted all hospitals nearby and the area Edhi centre but no success.”

She said that they had learnt that children between three and eight were being kidnapped en masse. She referred to a report aired by a private TV channel, which said a Burqa-clad woman was going over to houses and kidnapping children around Fajr time.

Abdul Hamid, a labourer of Bilawal Shah Noorani Goth, said that his son, Ahmed, 9, had been missing. The child’s mother, he said, didn’t know of the tragedy as she was seriously ill and admitted to a hospital and they thought it better not to inform her at this stage. He said they had informed the police, who had promised to help but just filed a “Katchi”report.

Badshah Gul, actually from Mardan but presently resident in Hyderabad, said Muhammad Asim, 8, son of his maternal uncle, Havildar Fazal Maalik, had come over from Hyderabad to attend a wedding in Orangi when Asim mysteriously disappeared on August 7 and has not been traced to date. He says that they had no enmity with anybody.

He said that they had even visited psychics but failed to get the correct information. Police, he said, had registered an FIR but to date there was no trace of the child.

Awan informed the mediafolk that 48 percent of the children kidnapped were girls. He said the Constitution of Pakistan addressed child protection in a number of articles as did the United Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Pakistan, he said, signed that convention in 1990 and said that the country was now obliged to take operational and legislative measures to protect the child from all harm.

He said that under UNCRC Articles 11 (kidnapping) and 35 (abduction, sale, or trafficking), it was the responsibility of the government to take all measures, administrative, legislative and operational to make sure that children were not kidnapped, abandoned or trafficked.

Unfortunately, he said, police had no system of documentation or any requisite training in this regard. He said the increase in the rising number of kidnapped/missing children laid bare the weaknesses of the country’s child protection systems, especially at the community level.

The crumbling familial pattern, he said, was also a contributory factor as it bred domestic violence which led children to run away from home to escape terrorising by parents or other forms of domestic violence. He corroborated his statement by saying that in many cases that they investigated, they found that the missing children were not victims of kidnappers but were runaways.

Awan said that after the passage of the 18th amendment, the issue of human rights, especially child rights, was passed on to the provinces, but unfortunately the provincial governments had not done enough to address child protection concerns.

They had set up bodies like the Child Protection Authority, Sindh, the Child Welfare Bureau, Punjab, and the Child Welfare Commission, KP, but said that requisite implementation machinery was lacking.