Special report on child protection

Of Pakistan's population of 140 million, half are children, making the need for child protection in the poverty-stricken country essential. In a nation where 33 percent of the population lives under the poverty line, children are forced to work in areas rendering them vulnerable to dangerous situations, compromising their rights. Some of the major issues in Pakistan presently affecting children are child labour, abuse, trafficking and exposure to violence and trafficking. In recognition of the need to tackle such issues, the country has committed itself to bettering their situation. Ibrahim Jabr, the country representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, that the government had already taken important steps towards providing children with protection. "Don't forget that Pakistan is one of the early countries which has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC]. It also attended the UN General Assembly's special session on children and endorsed its World Fit for Children document," he said. The CRC is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history, with every country but two having ratified it. It has uniquely placed children at centre-stage in the quest for the universal protection of human rights. The World Fit for Children declaration was the outcome of the special session of the UN General Assembly on children in May last year, at which the nations of the world committed themselves to a series of goals towards improving the situation of children and young people. Jabr pointed out that Pakistan needed to ratify the two optional protocols of the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. "Pakistan will certainly give it the attention it requires, and we will certainly contact people in the government and the parliament to see how we can speed up this process," he said. However, others believe that this issue is way down the government's agenda and are calling for more concrete action. SURVIVAL One of the most staggering protection issues for children in Pakistan is staying alive. "Presently we have more than 700,000 under the age of five dying in Pakistan every year," Anees Jillani, head of the Islamabad-based NGO, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), told IRIN. The country has the highest mortality rate in South Asia for children under five due to malnutrition and simple infections. Aid workers maintain that although the government's estimates show some 109 children out of 1,000 live births dying before the age of five, this is an unrealistic figure and believe the mortality rate to be even higher. With an infant mortality rate of 82, some 250,000 children die from diarrhoea alone each year. According to the nation's interim poverty reduction strategy paper, Pakistan aims to improve primary and secondary health care through a strategic shift from curative to preventive action and focusing on marginalised sections of the society. Muhammad Hassan Mangi, the director of Pakistan's National Commission for Child Welfare and Development (NCCWD), told IRIN that the government was doing its best to ensure that the nation's children survive diseases that can be easily cured. "Our aim is to give every child an opportunity to prosper by providing health care and education," he said. The government is also aiming to improve the health care of women by training community based women health workers who could serve to improve maternal health care. Additional programmes include the adoption of the Directly Observed Treatment Strategy against tuberculosis, and taking action to control malaria and to prevent the spread of hepatitis B through immunisation. Although Pakistan is a low-prevalence country, efforts are also being made to combat HIV/AIDS by way of public-awareness campaigns. One area in which the government has made headway is the eradication of polio. According to UNICEF, there are indications that Pakistan will soon be polio free. In 2002, the number of cases dropped to 90, compared to three years earlier when there were more than 1,000. "The curve is coming down, but vaccination has to be for every child every time. This is how you can make the virus disappear, otherwise it can strike back with vengeance if left unattended," Jabr said. EDUCATION

The government has made headway in its efforts to eradicate Polio

The prospects for education in Pakistan are not bright. Although the country is a member of the Education For All (EFA) initiative by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), statistics and trends paint a pessimistic picture. Launched in 1990, the EFA movement aims to universalise primary education by 2015, and bridge the gender gap by that time together with a 50 percent improvement in adult literacy. But with literacy broadly defined as those who can read and write, statistics for the country also include millions of Pakistanis whose literacy is confined to their ability to recite the Koran in Arabic, or simply to write their names. If these functionally illiterate people are included, only 61 percent of the country's male population can be classified as literate. Female literacy levels are worse still, at an abysmal 32 percent - with only 25 percent of rural women receiving education, compared to 55 percent of women in urban areas. Gaps also exist among the four provinces, with the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the southwestern Balochistan Province bordering Afghanistan having less than 25 percent literacy levels for both males and females. Mangi maintained that the government was spending US $40 million on primary education alone. However, aid workers continue to call for more funding and action. "If you want to prioritise the problems that government need to address, then it needs to address the problem of education first," Jillani said, adding that it was more important to develop human resources, and there were no excuses for spending huge sums on the military and debt servicing. Continued