While we are talking about terrorism incidents and the need to curb them on emergency basis, we are unaware of the everyday violence occurring in our country that outnumbers any act of terrorism on any scale. This is particularly disturbing if you compare violence against children and women. Every day, at least 10 children become victims of homicide, meaning that over 3,000 children are lost to this violence, a figure much larger than that of children killed in bomb blasts. A UNICEF report, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Statistical Analysis of Violence against Children’, surveys 190 countries, including Pakistan, and surveys boys and girls aged up to 19 years. Pakistan is in the top 10 countries in the world as far as violence against children is concerned. This menace in society goes almost unnoticed as casualties are scattered and rarely get the media spotlight for more than a few days.
While we have taken some emergency steps to curb and eliminate terrorism in the country and the multiple All Parties Conferences (APCs) are being conducted to pacify public outrage, very little is being done to prevent violence that is killing 10 times more children per year than terrorism. When a society becomes increasingly indifferent to what happens to children, it loses its humanity and when it loses its humanity it degrades itself to animal living where the survival of the mightiest becomes the rule of law. Why has society lost its ability to rebel against this everyday violence that we witness going on in our cities and neighbourhoods? What are the root causes of this moral and social poison that is conveniently reserved for some awareness seminars and talk shows and not emergency plans of the government? These are the questions that are never repeatedly pondered and debated as they require solutions that do not have an immediate demonstration effect, like forming military courts.
If we can make a 21st Constitutional Amendment to bring action on recommendations, why can we not ensure that those that are already in the Constitution are being followed by the government and, if not, then they are punishable acts. The profile of most of these children who are victims is that they are poor, from large families and have hardly any opportunity to be educated. This combination of poverty and illiteracy is lethal for children belonging to families that produce babies almost every year of their productive life. The real killers are economic and educational deprivation. Consider this: over 25 million children are out of school in this country, making every fourth child out of school in the world a Pakistani. It is shocking and shameful. Consider another statistic: more than 1.5 million children live on the streets and 90 percent of them have been sexually abused. Incidents of child labour rape have been on the rise as nearly every other day a maid working in a house is brutally beaten by either cruel employers or abused by lecherous men.
The ASER report just released presents a picture that says more than words. As mentioned before, over 25 million of five to 16-year-olds are out of school. As with every other development indicator, there is a gender divide: 11.4 million boys and 13.7 million girls are out of school. Moreover, children from lower income families are six times more likely to be out of school than their rich counterparts. In another estimate, 57 percent of all out of school children belong to rural areas. Based on the PSLM survey, the primary net enrollment rate (NER) is 57 percent while for middle and high school levels it falls drastically to 22 percent and 13 percent respectively.
One of the most prominent findings of the report is the survival rate recorded at 48 percent as children drop out of school by the time they reach secondary levels of education. By the age of 16, 55 percent of children in Pakistan are recorded to be out of school. This places Pakistan much lower than all its neighbours in the region.
The root cause of most social evils stems from a sense of deprivation, whether it is economic, emotional or intellectual. Children on the street, being used for begging or due to lack of space and care in poor families with a huge number of dependents, are sitting ducks for exploitation. Whether it was the 3-year-old toddler found dead near a mosque or the five-year-old girl raped last year, the demographics were similar. Both had 10 siblings of all ages and were living in two-room shelters or houses and thus their everyday abode was the street. With so many children, for the mother to keep track of their whereabouts for any decent length of time is almost impossible. Why do we say “population explosion”? Because this is a major cause of violence escalation. A large population itself is not the end of the world but a large, uneducated, unemployed and unaware population is a ticking time bomb in every sense of the word. When human beings are herded together like animals and not given basic rights, they will, in majority, become animals. A famished, neglected and abused child is the best fuel for terrorist nourishment and the ideal justification for a reproduction of any violence in society.
If every research proves that lack of education and economic subsistence produces an imbalanced society that breeds frustration, rage and violence, why are these factors not given the same importance as emergency actions against terrorism? Why are people who are responsible for providing education not doing so and, despite violating the Constitution, are not being punished for it? Why are there no political and civil society protests against the deprivation of this right? If the law does not provide any special penalty for this omission why are there no amendments being done to make this as unlawful as any other severe criminal act? Why are there no special courts being made to accommodate to try out people responsible for failing to provide what is truly the most important element to prevent and uproot terrorism?
It is the air crash phenomenon. Though deaths by road accidents are multiple times more than deaths due to air crashes, the importance given to measures to reduce air crashes is much more than road safety. The quantity of deaths in one go catches the media and mind’s imagination much more than everyday road deaths. Similarly, the abuses going on in our neighbourhoods are simply too frequent and less dramatic to deserve media, political and civil society attention. However, it is this everyday violence that eventually leads to terrorism on all levels. If there is no war against illiteracy, no war against poverty and no war against inequity, the war against terrorism will continue to be a battle unconquered.
The writer is an analyst and columnist and can be reached at [email protected]