THIS year it was Farishta; the year before, Zainab — this in a country where the 2015 discovery of the Kasur child pornography ring had already begun to feel like a distant fever dream. Years before, the disappearances of scores of boys in Lahore went unnoticed until the killer himself came forward. Back in 2000, their gruesome deaths moved the sentencing judge to describe a similarly macabre manner of execution. Last year, the idea of public executions was again stoked during the media spectacle surrounding Zainab’s case. What garnered significantly less attention was that, in 2018 alone, over 3,800 other cases of child sexual abuse were documented in Pakistani newspapers. These cases only represent the tip of a vast iceberg; there are countless cases of unnamed children whose abuse and/or murders go unacknowledged each year across Pakistan. Time and again, state and society have been indicted for being asleep at the wheel, and each time we have sought to assuage our guilt by calling for retribution — a response both inhumane and inadequate.

Thus, it comes as a welcome sign that, on Thursday, the ‘Protect Our Children’ awareness campaign was launched by the Ministry of Human Rights with support from the European Union. Indeed, for months, the country’s leading mental health experts have been calling not only for caregivers and educators to be sensitised as well as be able to identify signs of abuse or neglect, but for children to be made aware of their right to safety and bodily integrity. As the primary group affected by such violence, children must be involved by being taught basic life skills to protect themselves and offset the potential for abuse to lead to further isolation and trauma. The stigma associated with sexual abuse is a huge barrier to tackling this societal scourge. It cannot be eradicated by limiting the onus of having these important conversations with children to parents alone. Schools must be seen as safe spaces that equip students with all the necessary tools needed to survive and thrive. While it remains to be seen how much this aspect will be taken up by the campaign, which would involve federal and provincial collaboration to introduce life-skills education in school curricula, other proactive measures have been highlighted. These include the National Commission on the Rights of the Child, pilot child courts, and juvenile justice reform. It is hoped that this important work is never again relegated to the back-burner.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2019