Broken toys

Where the case of Tayyaba has rightly attracted national attention following the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s suo moto action, it is important to maintain this momentum while engaging with the broader debate of child abuse, child employment, and child trafficking in Pakistan. According to a report titled “Listen to My Voice” by three non-governmental organisations, 179 street children in Murree were found to be trafficked. These are alarming figures, which unfortunately are not surprising given how the practice of employing child labour is such a banal affair in Pakistan. And it is this normalisation of seeing child labour in public spaces that provides opportunity to unconscientious individuals looking to profit from the morally depraved practice of child trafficking

Many in Pakistan employ child labour without even realising that in the modern age, child labour is considered a breach of fundamental right. Few who do try to justify it do so on the grounds that employing children from poor families gives the child as well as the child’s family some income without which their already unenviable lives would be far more miserable. According to them, these children do not have any prospects to begin with as their families cannot afford to send them to schools, hence they are in fact doing them a favour by giving them work and training them for future employment in
similar positions.

However, all of this is deeply problematic for two main reasons. First, it tacitly lends sanction to the status quo that has made education for children a privilege rather than a right. All of these children employed in various places, ranging from servants and maids at home to assistants at shops, have an equal right to education, just like any other child, and they are being deprived of that right. It is the responsibility of the state to ensure that socioeconomic class does not become a barrier to quality education. And in justifying child labour, attention is drawn away from the state’s shortcoming on this particular area, thereby allowing it shirk from its responsibility. Second, child labournormalises the act of poor children not being in school. It reinforces the rigid class structure of Pakistan in which the poor are destined to be poor while the rich hang on to their position of power and privilege. The rich are not doing any favours by employing the children of the poor. In fact, they are exploiting the disadvantaged position of the poor by employing their children at reduced wages.

Finally, it should not be surprising that in a country in which the national conscience is not troubled at the slightest in seeing children working, child trafficking takes place at a disturbing degree. Hence, where it is the government’s failing to protect the rights and freedom of poor children, it is also the societal apathy that is to blame for all this. In order for Pakistan to be a truly inclusionary country, all lives would have to valued equally irrespective of socioeconomic class. The future of children belonging to poor socioeconomic classes is just as important as those belonging to privileged sections of society.*