No improvement in child rights, says NGO report

One of Pakistan's leading NGOs working on children's rights warns that the situation of children in the country is not improving, while very little progress has been made in the past. "As far as child-labour programmes are concerned, there is not much effort from the government, and children are still suffering," the head of Pakistan's Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), Anees Jilani, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. Children make up half of the country's population of 140 million. SPARC released its annual report, entitled "The state of Pakistan's children 2002", on Thursday, saying much work was still needed to protect vulnerable youngsters. Education and enrolment rates remained unchanged, Jilani said. Moreover, "the number of children out of school is increasing, which is going to have devastating effects on the future of the country too". Although prevalence is not high in Pakistan, aid agencies have warned of the increasing threat of AIDS spreading across the country, putting children who are being sexually abused at even greater risk. With shocking statistics on the number of child deaths under the age of five (103 in every 1,000 live births), Jilani said curable diseases such as hepatitis were still big child killers. According to the SPARC, one of the most under-acknowledged problems was that of juvenile justice, with hundreds of children languishing in jails. "If you go to the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan (in the southwest), children are behind bars without any legal help," he said. There are currently no specific laws to protect children, or on juvenile justice. "There should be separate centres where children are held, and they should be kept away from adults to prevent them from being abused," Jilani said. He stressed that corporal punishment was becoming an increasingly prevalent issue. "There have been a number of children who have committed suicide after being punished at school," he noted, calling on the government to take more action. "We have the resources, but the political will is not there and, under the new government, over the past six months, the ministers have not made any progress on the rights of a child." However, the programme director for Save The Children UK, Steve Ashby, told IRIN that at least the level of debate on children's rights was much more sophisticated than in previous years under different leadership. "There is better awareness now, but implementation is a key area where their programmes fall down."

Street children are especially vulnerable to sexual violence

Material for the annual report was gathered by SPARC following a review of government and press reports, and field visits. Aid agencies say the document is a valuable source of information. "It provides a country-specific analysis which no one else has done, and is good for the background on the situation of children in this country," Ashby said. Meanwhile, the government rejects claims that it is not doing enough. "There are some indications in various reports that the implementation from the government side is nonexistent. But if you look at the cases of children in prison in 1997 - 4,000 - and compare it to the 2,300 cases last year, you can see that there is a decrease," director of Pakistan's National Commission for Child Welfare and Development, Muhammad Hassan Mangi, told IRIN in Islamabad. Mangi maintained that positive progress was being made. "We have established the non-formal education system in the Punjab to stop child labour, and work is being done to get children into schools."