Consultation on Draft Child Protection Policy

In third of its series of dialogues on #DemocratizationOfEducation, Ibtidah for Education conducted its consultative on #childprotectionsim, in collaboration with #SZABIST where many missing aspects in the policy documents and legislation were discussed in detail and many experiences by experts and field workers working with children were highlighted. Some of the aspects that were discussed:
-How schools are involved in child protectionism and whether they grasp the idea of child rights in essence: in terms of out of school children, inclusion and equity, active role of school administrations in keeping checks
-Age of the child is not uniform across our legal instruments; for e.g., right to education fundamental right mandates compulsory education for children aged 5-16, yet age of the child that can be employed in certain occupation is 14. Also, age of the girl child is not uniform across provinces, this impacts human rights law application for girl-children.
-Laws are ineffective in implementation majorly because they are not backed by necessary budgetary allocation. There is a need to review how a concern is prioritized by reviewing how the government is spending on it. It is unfortunate that children are nowhere at priority.
-The Balochistan Child Protection Act of 2016 and the intention behind needs to be assessed on how the wordings are placed. There are concerns that the law has been drafted that may actually be benefiting perpetrators more than protecting children.
-The Child Protection Bureaus and how the system is working in Punjab works by penalizing parents of child beggars. A practice synonymous to "ransom" by collecting penalties and bribes. Also, there are reports of street children getting released from these units and showing signs of trauma.
-Denial of education when victims of sexual abuse find their names struck off from admission registers. A policy and a law must be put in place to ensure these children are able to continue education.

A detailed report will be published on IFE website soon.

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