Int'l Children Day today with hopes for better tomorow

KARACHI - Being a member of the United Nations, Pakistan is going to observe International Children Day here on Friday (today) on the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
In this regard Pakistan under Article 44 of the UNCRC submitted its third and fourth report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in December 2008.
The UN Committee after going though the report showed serious concerns over the non-implementation of its previous concluding observation in response to the second periodic report that was submitted in 2002.
Pakistan being state party, has apparently lacked a legislative framework, harmonized with the CRC and it has delayed the enabling laws that are instrumental to the implementation of the Convention which includes the Charter of Child Rights Bill, a facsimile of the CRC, has yet not been taken on the board.
Similarly, the Child Protection (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, which encompasses all the issues like child pornography, exposure to seduction, cruelty to a child, trafficking of human beings, sexual abuse, but it has not been adopted and it has been roaming in the bureaucratic corridors for years.
The Committee urged that government of Pakistan to abolish or amend some exiting laws that are in conflict with principles and provisions of the Convention, mainly the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901 enforced in FATA and the Zina and Hadood Ordinances, notwithstanding their revision through the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Act 2006.
In the light of definition of a child and conflict between the article 1 of the CRC and the national laws, the Committee suggested to the Government to have a unified definition of a child to remove discrimination on the basis of sex, such as to amend the Zina and Hudood Ordinances (1979), as well as the Child Marriages Restraint Act (1929) in order to align the age of marriage of boys (which is already 18 years) and girls (which is already 16 years) by raising the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 years.