The Pakistani Spectator

I was rather depressed to read at dawn.com the editorial this morning (see below) the fate of young kids who must be going to schools and enjoying their childhood by indulging in sports and healthy activities, are spending their child hood in making bricks, working at auto work shops, working at carpet factories , serving at road side tea stalls and cafe’s. Its not only the state, its all of us at fault and we are equally responsible here.  We hire girls and boys to look after our kids in our houses on ordinary wages against food and shelter. At times they are being treated in an in humane way, beaten as well and no effort being done to give them respect and education as well.

Our religion has clearly advised us to help and poor the needy especially orphans but we have taken it for granted and rest the responsibility on government and on welfare organizations like Edhi Foundation. A serious effort has to be done cause when these young kids see that their are limited opportunity for them to grow in a respectable manner where basic human rights are being denied to them, they turn their focus on making money either by hook or crook and we consider them as criminals having no family back ground to be treated fairly. But if no effort i being done on our part and government to keep them on the right path, we should not be blaming them as we have given our share to make them criminals or not letting them contribute to our country’s development by merely ignoring them.

Its sad but true as well that we tend to provide our own kids with every possible luxury of life and will not spare extra money to change the life of few children around us. I still see quite a few people adopting children, giving them education and making them a responsible citizen of Pakistan but such people are not in great numbers. We ignore such kids and Anti Pakistan elements attract their attention by giving them more than enough money then they could ever have dreamed of then using them against our country in the form of terrorists etc.

An excuse is generated that government has not got enough funds available, but there is a list out and one of the blogger here (Maria Sultan) got the list published, trillions of dollars can be recovered from these people if fair trials are being done, a lot of money can be generated for welfare activities if we simply start paying Zakat and Income Tax in the proper manner (apart from businessmen and women, salaried persons, a lot of women in our country do not pay Zakat on the jewellery they posses for decades) a lot of money can be saved if we learn to spent less for the show off on houses, cars, weddings, land, and in a rat race to be called as Elites. Defense budget can be cut down by discouraging spending on use less activities (monthly dinners, annual functions, use less foreign trips, great deal of payments to retiring senior officers, Pensions etc) and same goes for the civil service where we see extra ordinary spending on maintaining a good life style and un-due privileges.

We could do a lot but we lack intention on our part to do good, we see corruption every where around us and we decide that “why not us as well”
These young Children need our attention and above all a support from us in any form to enable them to become good citizens, that support can be initiated at individual level and we dont have to wait for others to come forward first. Now read the below editorial published today at Dawn.com and am sure that a lot has been written and said in this regard already. The truth of the matter is that no bothers, every reader takes a deep sigh of pain for the suffering kids and thats it after ten minutes we forget what we have to for these kids.

Pakistan had little to be proud on Friday, Universal Children’s Day. At a recent meeting of a UN committee on children’s rights, serious concern was expressed over the inordinate delays in acting on the Charter of Child Rights Bill and the Child Protection (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill that is meant to cover issues ranging from child pornography and sexual abuse to trafficking.These bills have been under discussion for years but have not been enacted into law. The UN committee also raised the matter of the Frontier Crimes Regulation and the Zina and Hudood Ordinances. Both these laws, despite revisions to the latter, contain clauses that conflict with the provisions of the UN convention on child rights. It also pointed out that the proposed National Commission on the Rights of the Child had not yet been constituted.

These delays translate into continuing misery for thousands of children whose rights are routinely abused. Although Pakistan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, issues such as child labour and trafficking, violence against children, sexual abuse and child marriages have not been resolved.

Legislation such as the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance is encouraging but insufficient. The latter was formulated in 2000 but its stipulated codes of conduct have never been properly implemented. Similarly, despite the Employment of Children Act 1991, child labour has increased in recent years due to a corresponding rise in poverty. It is essential that this dismal situation be rectified. The budgetary allocation for children’s health and education must be increased, and related issues such as development and poverty addressed. With the country’s population skewed heavily towards the young and a rising birth rate, it is high time that the protection of child rights became a priority of both the state and the citizenry.