A report by the NGO Sahil has revealed that reported cases of child sexual abuse rose by 11 percent in 2018. Over ten cases of abuse were reported every day last year, with a total of 3,832 child abuse cases being reported across the country from all four provinces as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir. In comparison 3,445 cases were reported in 2017. It is not clear however, whether child sexual abuse is becoming a more rampant problem or people are becoming more willing to report such cases to the police.
What is clear however, is that the sexual abuse of children has become endemic in Pakistan because it is a problem that has been swept under the rug for so decades. The report also points out cultural misconceptions related to gender which are contributing to the problem. According to the report, the tendency in South Asian cultures to keep girls indoors and prohibit them from socialisation as a way to protect them from unwanted sexual attention only makes them easier targets for incest. On the other end of the spectrum, the perception that boys are not vulnerable to abuse puts them at an even greater risk. Most sobering however, is the realisation that the subject remains taboo in our society, and consequently the numbers in Sahil’s report are likely a mere fraction of the actual number of sexual abuse cases in this country.
55 percent of the victims in the 3,832 cases were girls and 45 percent boys. Girls were most vulnerable from the ages of 0 to 5 and 16 to 18, while boys were most likely to be abused at the ages of 6 to 10 and 11 to 15 years. The total cases included 923 reported cases of abduction, 589 of sodomy, 537 of rape, 452 of missing children, 345 of attempted rape, 282 of gang sodomy, 156 of gang rape and 99 cases of child marriages.
Taking these appalling numbers into account, the government and the opposition must work together to draft a strategy that would make Pakistan a safer country for children. Calls for harsher punishment for abusers – such as those made in the aftermath of the Zainab Ansari rape and murder case in January 2018 — will not be enough. *