'Pakistan ahead in developing protective environment for children'

Parliaments from Saarc countries again pledged to protect children from a number of dangers such as trafficking, violence, sex exploitation and to bring parliamentary interventions to save children from this menace. The pledge was made at the three days regional conference hosted by the Senate with support of the IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union) as well as the Unicef.
Speaker National Assembly, Chaudhry Amir Hussain in his inaugural address underlined the need to develop a protective environment for children to guarantee their survival, development, protection and participation.
'Children are our future and their development and protection is our prime duty, we are bound to make concerted efforts to provide appropriate legal safeguards to them.' He called for accurate direction in drafting laws for addressing child protection issues.
This country had gone ahead in this direction. The country had formulated a plan of action for protection of children 'which was being acted upon in letter and spirit,' and in fact Pakistan is listed among countries which took initiative in adopting the UN Convention on the rights of the child.
Speaker Hussain added that Pakistan was a signatory of the Stockholm Declaration. In pursuance of this declaration it was planning along with regional countries of Asia to reduce children's vulnerability.
The IPU Secretary General Anders B Johnsson commended the seminar, and said that by arranging an undertaking of this nature, parliamentarians were taking one step further to look at the issues and offer concrete suggestions general guidelines for developing a protective environment for children, specially the question of protecting children in conflict with law. The Pakistan Unicef representative Martin Mogwanja said 'world-wide at least one million children are deprived of their liberty' though most countries lack statistics on the number of children in detention.
He urged good juvenile system to be put in place so that only children who had committed serious crimes and were continuing danger to their community should spend time in detention.
The vast majority of children who come into conflict with the law were first time offenders, and accused of minor infractions and to expose them to criminal, justice system would be like holding them apart from their community and family and detaining them with more serious and hardened criminals would increase not decrease their chances of reintegration, he added.
Earlier, in his welcome address, Senate Deputy Chairman Jan Muhammad Jamali reminded the seminar that child protection is enshrined in the Pakistan Constitution.
Further, as an Islamic country, Pakistan had an obligation towards protecting children because our Holy Prophet (PBUH) gave 'full attention to the upbringing of children and their maintenance, and for building their character.'
Attya Inayatullah, MNA, presided over the first working session in which Dan O Donnell of the Unicef presented a paper on 'Introduction to child protection issues'. Ms Karuna Nandy, Advocate of Indian Supreme Court, also discussed ways of legislating on the subject of child protection.
State Information Minister Tariq Azeem presided the second session. In this session Ms Faiza Asghar discussed on law necessary to end violence against children, as well as Sairan Kader from Mongolia made two presentation of overseeing government actions on the subject. As many as 80 parliamentarians and experts are taking part in the three days regional conference.