Every year on Nov 20 Universal Children Day is celebrated to highlight the issues being faced by children world over. Like in other countries, Universal Children’s day was also celebrated in Pakistan as various events, seminars and walks were organised to spread awareness on children’s rights. Day reminds us that we need to protect country’s future in every possible way. We need to provide opportunities to our children that they could play their part in making country prosperous.
In Pakistan children face many issues including child labour, child abuse, child marriage, and lack of educational and healthcare facilities.
It is a harsh reality that millions of children are not getting education at all. If we look at the statistics millions of children are out of schools. Educating the children plays a tremendous role for development of any nation, but perhaps we have not realized importance of education as millions of children are not attending schools. The state of Pakistan is failed to provide quality education to the small aged students.
We can see children in our surroundings collecting scrap or begging at the traffic signals. According to International Labour Organization, thousands of children collect garbage in the streets and bazaars of Pakistan.
Due to increasing poverty children are forced to work as labourers. Children can be seen working in factories, restaurants, brick kilns and as servants in private houses. Child labor is considered as a crime throughout the world, because it causes mental, physical, moral and social harms. But Pakistan is concerned world’s third largest children work force where the numbers of children are being forced to work illegally. At least, around 8 to 10 million child laborers are working in the country.
One of the main causes of child issues is increasing poverty in the country, but nothing substantial is being done in this regard as almost 40% people are living under poverty line. Children are considered future of any country. But it is unfortunately that in Pakistan government has completely failed to facilitate children in providing fundamentals rights as their poor voices are not being heard by policy makers.
