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Compliance with the Child Rights Convention

Global Arab Network - - Maha Karim

Saturday, 11 July 2009 00:28

In late 1989, the United Nations presented the world community with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which contains all possible rights that may relate to children. A World Summit was planned in 1990 to convince the UN members to sign it, and Pakistan became a co-host.

In the midst of this excitement to act as a co-host, the country signed, and later ratified the Convention on November 12, 1990. It is an altogether different matter that the country failed to achieve much in this context since then.

Monitoring of compliance to the Convention is done by an 18-member Committee on the Rights of the Child, which sits in Geneva three times a year. Parties to the Convention are required to file their Initial Report within two years of the ratification, and then every five years. Pakistan submitted its Initial Report almost on-time, but took nine years to submit the next one.

The Initial Report was considered by the Committee at its meetings held in April 1994. The Committee asked Pakistan to furnish it with a Progress Report about its compliance with the Concluding Observations by 1996 but it was  not done.

The Second Report was due by 1997 but it was not filed, until 2002. It was reviewed by the Committee held in September, and adopted on October 3, 2003. By the time the Committee took up the Second Report, the date for filing the Third one had passed, and the Committee accordingly asked Pakistan to consolidate its Third and Fourth Reports, and file them by 2007. Even this was filed late, and is to come up for consideration by the Committee on September 28 this year.

The Committee is over-worked, and it has formulated a strategy to partly overcome it. It holds a pre-sessional working group, prior to its regular session, where interested NGOs, and preferably their coalitions, can present their critique of the report, and supplementary and alternative information. Such a working group for purposes of considering Pakistan’s Report met in Geneva on June 17, and I presented to the Committee, what is sometimes called an Alternative Report.

The Committee, based on this presentation, has come up with a List of Issues, which it has already presented to the Government of Pakistan, and has asked it to respond to them in writing by August 3.

Any person in Pakistan can tell simply by looking around that country’s compliance with the Convention leaves lot to be desired. A simple review of the Committee’s Concluding Observations given in 1994, and 2003, shows that Pakistan has failed to comply with most of the recommendations.

The Committee, while issuing its Concluding Observations, has repeatedly asked Pakistan to follow the Guidelines while preparing its Report. Despite this, the government fails to do so. The Convention expects a State Party to introduce an institutional mechanism for implementing it.

NCCWD (National Commission for Child Welfare & Development), a small unit within the Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Social Welfare entrusted with the responsibility of preparing these reports, hires a consultant to draft these reports, instead of opting for institutionalisation. What can NCCWD expected to achieve with a meagre budget of Rs 2.8 million in a year in a country with a population of more than 70 million children?

The Committee had recommended that the Second Report and its Concluding Observations should be made widely available to the public; it was not done. The level of awareness about the Convention is rather low. A few seminars, or workshops, can hardly be expected to make a difference in a country of 165 million. A systematic and a sustained approach is required to achieve this goal. The use of media is this regard can be effective but it has hardly been used. It is nothing short of shocking that the Convention continues to lack force of law in the country; and thus remains an inspirational piece. Few child specific laws have been introduced. Only one law relating to child labour, i.e., the Employment of Children Act 1991 was enacted since 1990.

Two sets of child rights laws were introduced in the Province of Punjab, i.e., 1952 and 1983. They were never enforced. The Sindh Children Act has been on the statute books since 1955. However, no major steps have been taken to implement it. No laws exclusively relating to child rights exist in the Provinces of Balochistan, and the NWFP, and also for Federally Administered, and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas, Northern Areas, and Kashmir, which is with Pakistan.

Laws making education compulsory up to grade V have been introduced in all the Provinces, except Balochistan, Northern Areas, and the AJK. However, no steps have been taken to enforce these laws. Authorities meant to enforce these laws have not been formed despite passage of more than a decade in some cases; and the rules have yet to be introduced in the case of any of these laws. The present government while in opposition vehemently opposed the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979 (No. VII). Despite having a comfortable majority in the Parliament however, it has so far taken no steps to repeal this law. In December 2006, the previous government modified the Zina Ordinance 1979, which is a welcoming development.

Unfortunately, the country has been talking only about Plans of Action, and Policies since independence, and the plight of child rights is no different. Such action plans, and policies have never been able to make a difference to the children of Pakistan for the simple reason that they have no validity under law, and thus remain a simple piece  of paper.

Global Arab Network

The author presented the Alternative Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on behalf of the civil society in June. Anees Jillani can be reached at  aj@ jillani.org (KhaleejTimes)

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