There is no gentle way to say this: Pakistan is failing its children. According to Sahil’s Cruel Numbers 2024 report, at least 3,364 cases of child abuse were reported last year alone. That’s nine children abused every single day: in homes, schools, mosques, and on the internet. Children–some as young as five months–are being robbed of safety, dignity, and in too many cases, life itself. The response? Muted at best. Indifferent at worst. Let’s call this what it is: a national emergency buried under a national silence. The latest figures show Punjab accounting for 78% of reported cases. But make no mistake. This is a nationwide rot. A child’s vulnerability knows no province. In 53% of cases, the victims were girls; in 47%, boys. And in more than half, the perpetrators weren’t strangers but trusted adults: relatives, neighbors, religious instructors. This isn’t just abuse. It’s betrayal. Systemic. Repeated. Enabled by our refusal to talk. What’s worse? Conviction rates remain under 1%. Fewer than one in 100 cases sees justice. Courts delay. Police shrug. Lawmakers move on to the next press conference. When a society can’t protect its children, it doesn’t just lose its innocence. It forfeits its moral legitimacy. And if the physical world has failed them, so too has the digital. Between 2020 and 2022, Pakistan ranked among the top three countries globally for child sexual abuse content online, with 5.4 million reports flagged to international watchdogs. We have become exporters of abuse in the eyes of the world. Is there a greater shame? And yet. No outrage. No special parliamentary session. No emergency media coverage. Where are the sermons, the hashtags, the protests? Because pleading with the government has led us nowhere, this editorial is an indictment of all of us. For tolerating a culture that jokes about trauma, silences victims, and normalizes cruelty. For every time we stayed quiet when a child cried in the next room. For every school that dismissed a whisper. For every mosque that turned the other way. The time for soft language is over. We need dedicated child protection courts. Swift punishments. Funding for trauma recovery. A digital watchdog with teeth. And most of all, we need a collective national reckoning. Because if we can’t guarantee a child’s safety, we don’t deserve to call ourselves a nation. Not one worth saving. *