‘Parental neglect a subtle form of child abuse’

Karachi
Hunger and poverty are major issues in the defective bringing up and nurturing of children but parental neglect is an equally lethal yet subtle factor which is often ignored.
These views were expressed by Nafisa Shah, an MNA of the Pakistan People’s Party and the chief of party’s human rights cell, while presiding over a seminar titled “Protecting our children: a dialogue on child’s rights in Pakistan”.
It was organised by the PPP’s human rights cell at the Pakistan-American Cultural Centre (PACC) on Friday evening.
She said neglect of children by parents robbed them of much-needed love for which they compensated by looking for attention outside home and thereby becoming vulnerable to all kinds of pernicious influences, which could jeopardise their futures.
She congratulated the PPP’s human rights cell for highlighting this all-important issue which had not received due attention and was often just pushed under the rug.
“We want to inculcate progressive thinking in Pakistan. We should strengthen linkages with the media and civil society to bring about a sea change in the attitude of parents towards children and most of all, force the government to speedily implement resolutions on the rights of the child,” she said.
Nafisa said the recent superlatively despicable Kasur incident had shocked the world. “It is a scar on our national conscience but the Punjab government seems to be least bothered and is may even be shielding the heinous culprits because they are big wigs of the area,” she said. “We must learn to confront such heinous issues boldly. We have to initiate an awareness drive.”
Former journalist and an executive of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) said Pakistan lagged far behind in the endeavour of child rights and its important must not be relegated.
He said today even international trade was deeply intertwined with progress in implementing human rights while referring to the legislation by the European Community (EU) of not importing anything from countries where child labour was rampant.
The Right Reverend Nazir Alam of the United Church of Pakistan condemned child abuse and said all religions considered it an abomination. He most strongly condemned the Kasur incident.
Syed Najmi Alam, the Karachi president of PPP, said that unsavoury events should not be concealed. He said children who got involved in earning a livelihood at the age of eight or ten years were far worse off than those who went to school because they had to put up with corporal punishment and maltreatment. He said the government has to provide for such children. “Education of every child is the state’s responsibility,” he said.
Noted industrialist and business tycoon Majyd Aziz lamented that laws were made but nobody ever bothered to implement them. Like other speakers before, he too lamented that there was this national tendency to evade an unpleasant issue. In this context, he said carpet makers denied that any child labour was involved in the manufacture of carpets while the EU insisted that it was. The Bangladeshis, however, admitted that child labour was involved in the garments industry and decided to dispense with the children’s services and instead, train and employ their mothers. As a result of that, he said, Bangladesh’s garments exports had increased up to Rs32 billion.
He said between 2002 and 2006, child sex abuse cases had posted a 50 percent increase, which, he thought was because the government didn’t bother to implement anti-child abuse legislations.
Advocate Rana Asif said the PPP would work untiringly for the elimination of child abuse and corporal punishment in schools. He said there were so many joints where pornographic material was being purveyed unchecked which was accessible to children and was polluting their young, innocent minds, which, he said, was also a form of abuse.
But the sharks running the businesses were just not bothered and all they were concerned with was fattening their coffers. He said there were 963 traffic signals in town where children were often maimed and were forced to beg.
Vice-President of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said poverty was the main culprit in child abuse in our country. He said that police high-ups and other responsible officials were just not prepared to talk on the heinous Kasur tragedy.
Shahida Rehmani said that both the Constitution of Pakistan and Islam strictly forbade the maltreatment of children. She said Punjab, in particular, was one of the provinces where massive child abuse was taking place.