SO far this year, six cases of death and four of lifelong injury to children working in the domestic sphere have been reported. The number may not appear huge given the thousands of children toiling in the homes of people who abuse and exploit them. And yet, every child matters — poor or rich, girl or boy.

Thousands of children are routinely deprived of education, healthy growth and their right to protection from abuse, exploitation and neglect. They are denied their right to live with their families or spend their childhood in play. Indeed, their very future is destroyed.

As a nation we have become immune to human and child rights violations. We see, but fail to feel, the pain experienced by children on the streets, in prisons, being smuggled or used for drug trafficking and working in hazardous environments.

Child labour in the domestic sphere is amongst the most common forms of child labour in the country. This refers to situations where children are engaged in performing tasks in the homes of exploitative employers. There are cases where such exploitation is extreme and includes trafficking, slavery or practices similar to slavery, or work which by its very is hazardous and likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children. Helping Hands or Shackled Lives? Understanding Child Domestic Labour and Responses To It

Such children remain invisible to their communities, toiling for long hours with little or no pay and are regularly deprived of the chance to play or go to school, according to the International Labour Organisation's report . According to Unicef, children as young as five have been found working in the domestic sphere.

One reason behind the lack of attention to the plight of these children is that they suffer behind closed doors. “They are in a workplace — even if that workplace is someone else's home — hidden from public view and labour inspection,” notes June Kane, author of the ILO report. Echoing the report's findings, former Unicef executive director Carol Bellamy said that to describe many of the cases as 'domestic workers' is misleading. “We're talking about children who, instead of starting each day in the school yard, are getting up when it is still dark and toiling until night in slave-like conditions,” she said. “This is not legitimate employment.”

Despite voices being raised after Shazia Masih's case in Lahore in January, it is disheartening that other innocent lives continue to be affected by the heinous practice of child domestic labour. On Jan 22, 12-year-old Shazia Masih was allegedly tortured to death by her employers. Her family claimed that her body was severely wounded, with her right arm and ribs fractured, skull damaged and nails plucked out. On Feb 11, Yasmin, a 15-year-old girl, was allegedly burned by her employers in Okara and died five days later in a Lahore hospital. According to Yasmin's father, this was not the first instance of violence at the hands of her employers.

On June 3, Shahzad, who worked at the residence of a doctor in Gujranwala, was found dead on the rooftop. Tania, another victim of child domestic labour, was killed in July in Lahore. In August, Kausar, a teenaged girl working as domestic help in Lahore, died after vomiting blood. The latest in this series of tragedies is Firdaus, who worked in the home of a lawyer in Sahiwal. The child's grandfather has accused the employer of torture, rape and poisoning to death.

Tehmina and her sister, from Rahimyar Khan, worked for a family in Islamabad. They were treated cruelly and denied salaries for a considerable period of time. As Ramazan began, their demand for their long overdue salaries angered the employers who allegedly beat Tehmina and then threw her out of a first-floor window. She was taken to the hospital after three to four hours with a fractured backbone. The Islamabad Capital Territory Police did no better, refusing to register the first information report (FIR) until the district and sessions judge Islamabad intervened nearly three weeks later.

Samina, the elder sister who worked in the same house, disclosed that the employers had intended to kill Tehmina. The police, however, did not insert the relevant Section 324 of the Pakistan Penal Code into the FIR.

On Aug 23, a couple was arrested for torturing a teenaged houseboy and keeping him in illegal confinement. Mohammad Nadeem, 13 years old and a resident of Rahimyar Khan, was detained in a flat and subjected to torture. Upon raiding the flat, the police found him tied up in one of the rooms, apparently having been subjected to severe torture.

Many working children are young girls toiling as domestic help, unpaid in their own homes or paid a pittance in the home of others across the country. These girls constitute an invisible workforce in invisible workplaces. Their special needs demand particular attention. Child servants are routinely beaten and tortured, in some cases to death, as is evident from the reports mentioned above.

It is imperative that the federal and provincial governments take immediate steps. The federal government should immediately notify child domestic labour in the schedule of banned occupations under the Employment of Children Act 1991. Both the federal and provincial governments should prohibit government employees from employing children as domestic servants and should immediately start programmes for the rehabilitation of child domestic labourers. The effective implementation of the constitutional provision about free and compulsory primary education for children of five to 16 years could also be a good preventive step.

The writer is the executive director of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.