Driving on the roads of Islamabad one chilly night, I came across a child selling flowers at a traffic signal. The poor child was shivering in the cruel cold, the temperatures so low that even the intensity of traffic had fallen. Such a sight in the capital city is not an aberration, as one can often see children at traffic signals selling various items. But that night, I noticed the child because, ironically, an advertisement for the ‘Child Protection Bill’ was playing that very moment on the local radio. It was a call for everyone to support the cause and protect children, especially those out in the streets.

I have been hearing about the Child Protection Bill for quite a while now, and can’t help but wonder how long we needed to ‘support’ the bill before it translates into the implementation phase. How much time do our honourable legislators need to adopt this bill, and how long till the executive implements it in letter and spirit?

The Child Protection Bill has finally been submitted to the Law Division last month and it will soon be adopted by parliament. I say finally because the bill has been bouncing off from here and there for nearly three years. It was first prepared in 2006 to bring the existing legal structure in consonance with the directions of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – yes the very same convention that Pakistan had ratified as early as 1990. But the cabinet rejected the bill, directing the Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education to formulate a policy instead.

A national campaign was launched in 2008 to support the bill again and to push it through as legislation. Since then, the bill and the policy draft have been tossed around in a condescending manner, with the cabinet refusing to address it on several occasions, and at times sending it to the Ministry of Finance for review as there are no separate funds allocated in the budget for this purpose. Such delays have also frustrated international observers in the recent past.

The Child Protection Bill will be implemented only in Islamabad, while the National Child Protection Policy will be extended all over the country. The new measures being taken aim to provide relief to millions of children, especially those out in the streets who are most vulnerable to abuse. According to the Ministry of Social Welfare and Special Education, approximately 35,000 children are living in the open in the four major cities of Pakistan without any family protection whatsoever.

The bill also aims to raise the age of Criminal Responsibility to 12 years. Currently in Pakistan a seven-year-old child can be implicated in a crime, which is one of the lowest ages of Criminal Responsibility in the world. Under Islamic law, the definition of criminals under the Hudood Ordinance 1979 is applied to all those who have reached the age of puberty. According to the law of the land, all those under 18 years implicated in criminal activities are considered juveniles.

Moreover, there are not adequate protections against corporal punishment in Pakistani legislation. The recent case of a six-year-old girl who lost her eye when her teacher threw a pencil at her, currently being heard in Lahore High Court, is a glaring example of how children abused in class settings have little recourse to justice. Corporal punishment is the main reason cited to explain the high dropout rate that we have in our schools. Unfortunately, there is still a segment of our society that justifies corporal punishment on the grounds that it is the most effective way to rectify a child’s mistakes, notwithstanding the breach of a child’s honour and integrity that comes with it.

Juvenile justice is another pressing issue that bill will wrangle with. The internationally accepted principle on how to treat a child in the event of a conflict with the law is to reintegrate him/her into society. It is certainly not the practice followed here, where more than a thousand children (registered only) are languishing in jails across the country while awaiting trial. In their cells, these children have to cope with problems like malnutrition, overcrowding, mental or physical abuse, etc. The only worthwhile step to address this grave concern was the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000. The ordinance introduced various relief measures for juveniles at each stage of their trials. As always, the implementation of this ordinance has not been in accordance with the spirit of the legislation.

Child labour, especially in its bonded form, is another dilemma in our society. According to one estimate, there are more than five million children under the age of 14 years working to ensure the survival of their families when they ought to be going to schools. This phenomenon of child labour coupled with the practice of child trafficking is playing havoc with the lives of the next generation. Many critics suggest that the poverty alleviation efforts of the government must be linked with putting children in schools. According to them, the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) would have been more fruitful in the long run had the cash dispersed through it been linked with sending children to schools, somewhat like the model of Brazil’s revolutionary program, Bolsa Familia, and other conditional cash transfer programs.

Passing the Child Protection Bill and adopting the Child Protection Policy are just the first steps that alone cannot provide relief to all those children who need it on an urgent basis. For this relief to come, the government must show willingness to implement all the statutes in letter and spirit. The authorities must also shun the lackadaisical approach that has defined official dealings with the Child Protection Bill until this point.