ON an ordinary March afternoon this year, the children of a household in Lahore’s Choong district gathered for their uncle’s small promise of treats. Among them was four-year-old Azan, who was led out for a stroll by his uncle. It all ended eight hours later in the isolated outskirts of Quaid-i-Azam Industrial Estate — with Azan dead. The minor’s body, when recovered, showed a two-inch exposed spinal cord attaching the head and mutilated remains. Azan had reportedly been tortured and eventually killed with an eight-inch-long knife by his own father, allegedly in a calculated bid to implicate a third party. Azan is just one of several children who are killed every month by people known to them.
Moving back, in October, a 13-year-old in Mianwali was shot dead by her cousin for not wearing a hijab. In September, a three-year-old in Islamabad was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by her brother-in-law. In August, an 18-month-old in Karachi died after being raped by her 17-year-old cousin, while in July, a six-year-old boy was beaten up, raped, and strangled with a wire by his neighbour, and a four-year-old girl in Gujranwala was set on fire by her mother on suspicion of being ‘possessed’. In May, a father in Vehari repeatedly raped his three daughters aged 14, 11, and nine for six consecutive months; while three children aged six, four, and three were killed and found hanging from the fans in their home in Multan. A month earlier, in April, a mother in Lahore brutally slit the throats of her three children, luring them through a sadistic ‘game’ of hide-and-seek.
Occurring within the safe confines of the home, these tragedies shocked and enraged us more than others, but our protest ended in quiet resignation, as it did in 2022 when an eight-year-old was tortured and poisoned by her grandparents for failing at household chores, and in 2015 when a 12-year-old was beaten to death by her father for not making properly round rotis.
Homes repeatedly turn into hell for children as our criminal justice system is unequipped to intercept and prevent attacks within the home. Statutes such as the ICT and Sindh Child Protection Acts create institutional bodies that address minors’ welfare, but they lack the authority to adopt anticipatory, prompt, and intrusive measures to ensure child safety. Our laws are reactive rather than anticipatory. Even the landmark Zainab Alert, Response, and Recovery Act, 2020, creates a protection mechanism for missing children that is enforceable only after the abduction is reported. As a result, attacks on children in public are not easily prevented.
Our criminal justice system is unequipped to intercept and prevent attacks within the home.
Recently, a five-year-old in Haripur was raped and left to die after being lured out of her home to see her father; an eight-year-old in Lahore was sexually harassed in a grocery store by the owner, and an eight-year-old in Sargodha was raped and murdered in a grocery store. Even when these victims were seen being accompanied or coaxed by a group of men or being eyed by strangers, the palpable threat of attack was ignored by those present at the scene. It was also in the presence of bystanders in Multan that 15-year-old Wasim was tortured and then run over by his employer recently. Whether it was their indifference or ignorance, they abandoned the weakest, most vulnerable members of society — our children. Being voiceless, defenceless and weak, children are considered dispensable. It is, therefore, easy to ignore injustices against them.
We tolerate inadequate child protection laws and mechanisms, ignore the proliferation of pornographic content, disregard paedophilic customs such as trading minor boys, and permit appalling lectures advocating marriage with girls as young as four. Our complicity and apathy have normalised child abuse and allowed it to persist, putting Pakistan third on the global map for child abuse. Around 2,000 cases of child abuse were reported in just the first six months of the current year. Sahil reported over 3,600 in 2025. In 2024, 21 children were being abused daily. Reducing such horrifying figures demands enforceable protection under the law. Justice Jawad Hasan in 2023 (Zafar Khizer vs the Federation of Pakistan)initiated a shift in discourse from viewing children as ordinary citizens to viewing them as vulnerable citizens categorised as ‘child citizens’ and entitled to a higher degree of protection and concern under the law. Justice Usman G. Rashid last month said that the child citizen is entitled to fundamental rights in their independent capacity that cannot be displaced by any parental authority. While the concept of the child citizen as an independent rights holder is evolving through jurisprudence, it is insufficient without effective implementation and accountability.
Mandatory reporting regimes should be introduced for designated professionals such as healthcare providers, instructors, and adults in child-related roles or positions of trust, as under Australian law and England’s Crime and Policing Act, 2026. Additional measures for prevention through reporting suspected child abuse and conducting child-sensitive investigations and follow-ups in such cases must be made compulsory in line with the spirit of Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These obligations must be rooted not merely in law, but in a shared sense of humanity and a collective duty to protect the vulnerable because, as lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jahangir said, a society that fails to protect its children has, in fact, failed humanity’s most basic test.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2026
Source: www.dawn.com
