By 
11-11-2024
Markela Ndocaj
Pakistan Researcher,
Global Human Rights Defence.
Last week’s calendar was enriched by a historical event for all countries and international organisations, with the meeting of the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children (VAC, 2024). The conference, which happened in Colombia, was endorsed by the government of Colombia, the government of Sweden, UNICEF, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence Against Children and finally, the World Health Organisation. The gathering hosted a total of 143 country representatives from all over the world and it aimed at unifying forces to terminally fight all forms of worldwide child violence, eventually targeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of ending violence against children.
Pakistan’s delegation was pioneered by Ayesha Raza Farooq, Chairperson of the National Commission on the Rights of Children (NCRC) and Sarah Ahman, Chairperson of the Child Protection Welfare Bureau (CPWB) who set ambitious but manageable goals to stop the issue in their respective countries.
Children in Pakistan face countless challenges that tend to attack both their physical and psychological well-being. Amongst them we can find physical and sexual abuse which counted 4,213 victims in 2023 alone (Sahil, 2023), or child marriages involving more than 40 percent of women’s lives (Sindh, 2014). Many other systematic problems concern children, such as the growing rate of child labour (26 percent) at times life-threatening, and the use of violence in the parents’ or guardians’ discipline methods (81 percent).
The mentioned statistics show an impressive amount of marginalised minors have been carefully involved in Pakistan’s solution plan presented in Bogotá, mainly involving two official pledges (prepared beforehand during the National Preparatory Session on October 3rd, 2024) carried out by the spokespeople.
The first pledge sets the attention on Strengthening Integrated Child Protection Services, promising to expand and possibly enhance child protection services all over the country by 2027. The goal includes the reinforcement of child protection units, as well as the enacting and implementation of child protection laws while developing a gender-responsive and child-sensitive workforce.
Furthermore, pledge number two involves the battle against violent discipline led by parents or guardians, officially promoting Promotive Positive Parenting and Non-Violent Discipline. The initiative focuses on equipping roughly 28 million parents and caregivers with the tools to possibly create the safest and most positive environments for children in the attempt of challenging damaging social and gender norms.
Ayesha Raza Farooq finally emphasised Pakistan’s duty to ensure that responsive services are accessible and effective across all of the country’s provinces and territories, compatible with constitutional and international standards, as the renewed commitments towards children’s rights leave the international society on hold and hoping for the best outcome.
Sources and further readings:
Bano, M., Hameed, W., Cruel Numbers 2023, March 2024.
Available at: https://sahil.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/. Accessed November 10th, 2024.
End Violence Against Children, ‘7-8 November 2024 Bogotá, Colombia’, 2024.
Available at: https://endviolenceagainstchildrenconference.org/. Accessed November 10th, 2024.
Sindh Bureau of Statistics, Sindh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2014, 2014.
Available at: https://mics-surveys-prod.s3.amazonaws.com. Accessed November 10th, 2024.
Pakistan Today Team, ‘Pakistan commits to ending violence against children at global conference in Colombia’, 10 November 2024.
Available at: https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2024/11/10/. Accessed November 10th, 2024.
Comments