From evil’s claws depression come
so many people live in strife
not knowing how to cope or live --
always burdened by the scars of life

As it started, even 2017 doesn’t look much promising for our children. At the outset of the New Year, the number of incidents pertaining to violence against children across Pakistan that were merely reported in the newspapers amount to grave sums. The victims of violence were mostly girls with their ages ranging between five to 13 years.

Reports suggest that most of the children that face severe violence are mostly those who are hired as domestic workers. On the contrary, it is vividly observed in our homeland that children, living under any circumstantial setting of our society, are subjected to violence and abuse … schools, streets, domestic and industrial employment, mechanical workshops … anywhere and everywhere whatsoever … life of a child is seldom kind here. Rape, exploited sexual trade, sever corporal punishment, pornography … all forms of abuses are inflicted in humongous proportions.

The state of our [ill-fated] children represents our societal attire that by now seems starkly disgraced. A society baring all those glitches must be a crude composition of faltered sentiments at a collective scale.

A society, in general, is regulated under two essential and interconnected institutional dispositions -- legal apparatus and code of ethics. Both, however, are the outcomes of larger collective agreements. A legal system, that espouses tailored apparatuses and instruments for judgement of actions as crime or fairness, attempts to safeguard the denial of [for granted] justice. Whereas, the code of ethics champions a value system that helps maintain fairness and goodness in order as a matter of collective societal choice.

The evolution of both of these social dispositions hence indicates the degree of maturity and civilisation in any given society. Deplorably, we seem criminally underperformed on evolving both of these societal institutions.

When it comes to legal strand of our society, it is only dismayed that our law makers ought to display an insinuating neglect towards the matters of such grave concerns. It took our society much longer to have realised the need of affirmative laws pertaining to problems that our children face. It is heartening to witness that after the promulgation of the 18^th Amendment, our provinces have shown a better pace in strengthening legislative frameworks though, the content and spatial coverage of issues of the children yet remain challenging and seek immediate attention for further improvisation.

It has now been amply prolonged that the Senate adopted a bill for federal capital territory several months ago. The bill attempts to deal with child abuse and suggests tougher punishments thereto. The bill, however, remains unattended in the National Assembly. This only reflects a lack of concern on the part of our electoral mandate. Our elected representatives might have been sorting out much spurring priorities than to pen legislative moves on violence against children.

The implementation of the laws is another critical area of concern here in our society. The quality of our legal framework, as it has been mostly inherited as a legacy of the British rule, seems not very weak rather it is seen as one of the profoundly populated statute. Albeit, the literal enforcement of laws is a supply side function, the spirit of laws greatly remains a subject of demand side social institutions however.

The paramount failure of enforcing laws could be accrued to weakening supply side institutions on one hand, the onus of cultivating and growing the spirit of laws yet rests on the shoulders of a given social setting as a collective responsibility. It is the spirit for which the society would have had any legal system thereof. The society therefore rests under a greater obligation to ensure that the spirit of its legal endeavours is amply fortified by moral codes, values et al.

It is this fortification that helps a society keep its social fabric intact and immune to evil dangers. Merely a society would have any choice other than nurturing the evolution of its intrinsic value system and taking it to greater moral heights if it wishes to keep its societal manoeuvers in good order.

Appalling it is, however, while witnessing our fast degrading value system that only indicates further lawlessness and unpopularity of morality within our society. The children of compromised advantage have to pass through all the strife as if willfully incubated in to our ingrained collective moral bankruptcy.

Our societal order, shamelessly disposes the dictum for these children as being the sole subjects of misfortune that they beget inheritably. A menace that we all, the people of holy beliefs, forge by having in repository of inconspicuous flicks instead of an upgraded collective conscience. Several hundred thousands of children have to sacrifice their playful age, live without basic human rights and that under severe [non] living conditions whilst we brag our pretentious opulence.

It is only disheartening how hard one has to struggle to communicate within a society of faltered sentiments about universal human bearings. It is profoundly unpopular here if someone attempts making a point around child rights, child labour, child abuse, disapproval of corporal punishment and not to mention heinous crimes against children. Often, it is a mass phenomenon that our people are found in sheer lack of intellectual capacity, civic education and kindness whilst residing within self-satisfying devious conspiracy theories.

A sizable proportion of our society yet considers that talking about child rights is a westerner agenda. Talking to anyone about this colossal menace … from government functionaries to the political fraternity and across the classes … further exhibits our lack of civic sensibility. We collectively lack the sentiments that disapprove the cruelty happening all around us and mostly not farther than the neighbourhood.

Despair prevails despite the massive glorification of religious codes in the absence of societal recognition of this issue. Morality and civilisation only remain conspicuous by their absence here. Longing remains the only bright fissure at the end of this impounding tunnel.