Corporal punishment law and Pakistan’s Child security saga: Shafaqna Special

by Tauqeer Abbas
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The National Assembly has passed a law that effectively bans all forms of corporal punishment in all types of educational institutes and has set out penalties for anyone physically assaulting children. This is indeed a historic move and been hailed by child rights groups who have been campaigning for several years for the legislation. Child rights groups have hailed this development as game-changing. Indeed, corporal punishment and the sheer acceptance of it in Pakistani culture and schools had spiralled into an out-of-control problem.

Not only does it leave very damaging forms of trauma and emotional disturbance, leading to more drop-outs from school and education systems, but the blatant lack of child rights and unbridled corporal punishment had also led to a rise in child murders. There was the shocking death of Hunain Bilal, a teenager who was grabbed by his hair and slammed against the wall of his own classroom by his teacher.

Last year, a barbaric video of a five-year-old beaten to death at a Pindi-Bhattian madrassah took the entire country by storm. A 10th grader lost his life to injuries sustained at the hands of his teacher in 2019. A year before, a nine-year-old madrassah student was bludgeoned to death in Karachi. And these are the few episodes that made it to mainstream media. Innumerable more occur daily in matchbox-like schools that pepper streets all across Pakistan.

There are hundreds of similar cases, happening in schools, homes, madrassahs, workplaces physical abuse against children is committed by parents, teachers, employers, landlords alike. Several legal loopholes prevented such cases to be brought to justicean offence involving physical torture inflicted on a child by parents or guardians is dealt with under Section 89 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Pakistan has one of the highest out-of-school children in the world and numerous others drop out due to derogatory punishments and attitudes at schools. The cases reported in media are just a handful and even fewer make it to police reports while abuse is extreme and widely prevalent. Thousands of children are growing up with the trauma and cannot become productive members of society. It’s time to end this abhorrent practice for the welfare of our children.

Shafaqna Pakistan
pakistan.shafaqna.com

 

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