Child protection law on the cards

The government is contemplating a law for protection of children and safeguarding them against abuse by creating an environment to help their upbringing in a healthy and pleasant atmosphere.The law proposes setting up courts to solve custody disputes and checking violations of children’s rights.“The idea to frame such law and set up institutions to provide protection to children came after a recent incident in Karachi in which three women had abandoned their eight children at the Edhi Foundation,” Law Minister Farooq H. Naek was quoted by Local Newspaper.

A meeting to discuss possibilities of framing the law to protect the rights of children was called by the law minister in which Minister for Social Welfare Samina Khalid Ghurki was specially invited to help devise the Child’s Protection Bill as early as possible.

A sub-committee, comprising secretaries of the two ministries and the relevant provincial governments, has also been formed and tasked to come up with suggestions for setting up institutions for protecting children from all kinds of discrimination and abuse.

Despite the fact that Pakistan ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 that calls upon governments to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination and punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, and beliefs of the child’s parents, but no law has yet been made.

The proposals that were discussed during the meeting suggested the setting up of a national commission on child’s right at the federal level and child protection bureaus at the provincial level.The idea also includes creating posts to appoint protection officers to check violation of rights of children.The proposal suggests setting up courts at the provincial level in consultation with the high courts where the cases of children in need of care would be heard and decided, especially disputes relating to custody.

International Childrens Day in Pakistan - Part III

Boys play in the debris of a government school after it was attacked by militants with explosives in the troubled area of Swat valley. A large number of schools have been destroyed due to militancy and violence in Pakistan's northern regions.

School papers lie on the ground after a government school was attacked by militants with explosives during the early morning on Wednesday 26th December, 2008 in the troubled area of Swat valley.

Children wash themselves along Lyari Lake in Karachi due to unavailability of water in their area in Gulshan-e-Iqbal. As the world observes International Children's Day, children in Pakistan still struggle for basic necessities such as food and water.

Children walk past a pile of garbage in a street of Twin Cities.

International Children's Day in Pakistan - Part II

Two boys carry garbage sacks as they search for recyclable goods in a street. Majority of the nation's children cannot afford to go to school and instead start working at an early age to earn money for themselves and their families.

A young girl along with her father beg for their livelihood at a roadside.

As the world observes International Children's Day, a young boy works as a mechanic and repairs a motorcycle.

Young girl sells stickers for her livelihood at a main intersection in Islamabad. Although the government says it is fully aware of its responsibilities in protecting the rights of children and providing them better facilities of life, majority of Pakistan's children don't even have basic education.

International Children's Day in Pakistan - Part I

A young boy busy in giving final touches to wooden furniture in Lahore instead of attending classes at a school.

Local children display broken pieces of a US missile in the rubble of a house hit by the missiles in Indi Khel village near Bannu, Pakistan on Wednesday, Nov 19, 2008. Children in the troubled regions of Pakistan are being constantly exposed to violence and attacks.

A schoolboy watches a cobbler repair his school bag at a roadside shop. More than 25 per cent of Pakistan's 150 million people live below the poverty line, despite the country's economy growing by 6.6 per cent last year, and 8.4 per cent in 2004-5, its highest in two decades

A boy carries wood on a bicycle too big for him to ride on in Islamabad.

Over 5 Million say ‘NO’ to Violence against Women

More than five million people around the world have sent a clear and unequivocal message to their governments to take decisive action in stopping the relentless cycle of violence against women, at the conclusion of an Internet-based United Nations campaign on Tuesday.

The UN Development Fund for Women launched its ‘Say no to violence against women’ awareness-raising campaign last year, calling upon governments to make the ending of violence against women a top priority.

The initiative amassed more than five million names on its website petition, easily surpassing its original target of one million signatures.Academy-award winning actress and Unifem Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman presented the signatures to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a ceremony at the UN Headquarters.“Women are abused at home, trafficked across borders or [become] victim to widespread and systematic sexual violence in conflict,” Ms Kidman told reporters before the ceremony. “As long as one in three women and girls may be abused in their lifetimes, violence against women must be everybody’s business.”She added that the document containing the campaign signatures was “a start” in the push to force “decision-makers” to implement laws, educate both men and women, and provide the protection, health and legal services needed in the fight to eliminate violence against women.“Through Say NO, people in the farthest corners of the world have become engaged. This is a large new constituency that we will continue to evolve and mobilise in the years to come,” said Unifem executive director Inés Alberdi.Heads of State and ministers representing 60 governments joined more than 600 parliamentarians from over 70 countries in adding their names as a public expression of commitment to tackling the problem.“This high-level support for the issue is crucial,” said Ms. Alberdi. “Without strong political will, there will be no decisive action.”

Quake affectees struggle through cold!

The temperature is dropping every passing day in the quake-hit areas of Ziarat threatening the lives of thousands of earthquake survivors who were spending nights in the tents provided to them.
'Whole nights our children cry due to the cold weather,' a 40-year-old survivor Manzoor Ahmed told Dawn in the Ahmedon area which was badly affected in the recent earthquake. He said the tents so far provided to the affected people cannot protect them from the freezing temperature.
'We need winterised tents immediately to protect our families from further misery,' another survivor Akhtar Mohammad said, adding that there was no shortage of food and other items but people were not getting winterised tents as needed.
Children are falling ill due to the severely chilly weather and the number of such children is increasing with every passing day.
'Countless children suffering from throat infection and chest congestion are arriving in the field hospitals every day for treatment,' a lady doctor visiting the earthquake-hit areas said. She said the freezing weather is threatening the health of children and women in the affected areas. However, the heath department denied that an epidemic was spreading in the affected areas and said that four lady doctors and physiologists were visiting those areas on a daily basis and providing medical treatment to the women and children.
However, official sources said that the provincial government and aid agencies were sending winterised tents and other relief goods for the earthquake survivors. They said the provincial government and the International Committee for the Red Cross have so far sent 2800 winterised tents in the worst-affected earthquake areas of Ziarat district while Muslim Hands dispatched some 800 shelter houses for the survivors. ICRC was also sending 2000 more winterised tents for the affected areas.
'We are making all out efforts to arrange winterised tents and shelter homes for the quake-hit areas to save the lives of quake survivors,' a senior official of the provincial government told, adding that Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani has appealed to the federal and provincial governments, aid agencies and other organisations to send maximum number of winterised tents to protect earthquake survivors from the severe cold weather.
Fourteen teams comprising the Army, FC, officials of Revenue department and the local administration have completed the losses's survey in almost half of the quake-struck areas of Ziarat and Pishin districts.
According to official sources 75 per cent survey of 120 villages of the five union councils of Pishin and 49 villages out of 92 villages of four union councils of Ziarat districts had been completed.
They said the public heath engineering department has installed water filtration plants at five places in the affected areas to provide clean water to the people.

Karachi an Atmospheric Brown Cloud hotspot

A view of the main commercial district of Karachi is seen engulfed in smog February 22, 2008

Karachi and twelve other mega-cities of Asia has been declared as Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) ‘hotspots’ by the UN environment agency as soot levels in these cities comprise ten per cent of the total mass of all man-made particles.
A three-kilometer-thick ‘brown cloud’ of man-made pollution, which stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China to the western Pacific Ocean, is making Asian cities darker, speeding up the melting of Himalayan glaciers and impacting human health, says the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in a regional assessment report with focus on Asia.
The report on ‘Atmospheric Brown Clouds’ released on Thursday states over the Asian hotspots, the annual natural plus anthropogenic (AOD) exceeds 0.3 and the absorption optical depth is about 10 per cent of the AOD, indicative of the presence of strong absorbing soot accounting for about 10 per cent of the amount of aerosols.
The annual mean surface dimming and atmospheric solar heating by ABCs over some of the hotspots range from 10 to 25 per cent, such as in Karachi, Beijing, Shanghai and New Delhi, says the report.
In addition to Karachi, the UNEP’s new publication points out Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran as being ABC ‘hotspots’.
Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs), resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, has resulted in the formation of particles such as black carbon and soot which absorb sunlight and heat the air, experts write in the study released today in Beijing.
The clouds also ‘mask’ the actual warming impact of climate change by anywhere between 20 and 80 per cent because they include sulfates and other chemicals which reflect sunlight and cool the surface.
The artificial lowering of temperature by ABCs is leading to sharp shifts in weather patterns, causing significant drying in northern China while increasing the risk of flooding in the Asian nation’s south. Monsoon precipitation over India and South-East Asia has dropped up to 7 per cent since the 1950s, with the summer monsoon both weakening and shrinking.
Meanwhile, the health and food security of 3 billion people in Asia are threatened by ABCs, which impacts air quality and agriculture.
The solar heating of the atmosphere by ABCs is ‘suggested to be as important as greenhouse gas warming in accounting for the anomalously large warming trend observed in the elevated regions’ such as the Himalayan-Tibetan region, the study says, leading to the retreat of glaciers.
The acceleration of the retreat of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan-Tibetan (HKHT) glaciers since the 1970s, in conjunction with the decrease in the summer monsoon rainfall in the Indo-Gangetic Plain region, is a major environmental problem facing Asia, threatening both the water and the food security of South and East Asia. Glaciers and snow packs provide the head-waters for Asia’s major river systems, including the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yangtze.
If the current rate of retreat continues unabated, these glaciers and snow packs are expected to shrink by as much as 75 per cent before the year 2050, posing grave danger to the region’s water security. This potential threat should be viewed in the context of the low per-capita water availability in South and East Asia, around 2000 - 3000 m3/cap/year, far less than the world average of 8549 m3/cap/year, the report says. The most serious health impacts of particles associated with the ABC include cardiovascular and pulmonary effects leading to chronic respiratory problems, hospital admissions and deaths. The clouds contain toxic aerosols, carcinogens and other harmful particles. Review of the available evidence indicates that there are likely to be very significant public health impacts from the ABC.
While the effects of the clouds on food production and farmers’ livelihood could be immense, more research must be done to determine their precise role, it acknowledges, adding that the possible impact of ABCs could include elevated levels of ground-level ozone, which could result in massive crop losses of up to 40 per cent in Asia.
Concern for a worsening situation in the future is highlighted by projections which suggest that the annual surface mean ozone concentrations in parts of South Asia will grow faster than anywhere else in the world and exceed 50 ppb by 2030.
Another important characteristic of ABC forcing in Asia is that it introduces large north-south asymmetries in the forcing and large land-sea contrasts. Since these are the driving forces for the monsoonal climate, ABCs have become major forcing terms for regional temperatures, circulation and precipitation.
There currently exist only a few unevenly distributed ozone monitoring sites across the whole of Asia, making it difficult to obtain a true picture of the current Asian ozone climate and how this varies by geographical characteristics
Global ozone projections suggest that some of the largest increases in ozone concentration will occur in South and Southeast Asia from now until 2030. Such projections would see South Asia becoming the most ozone polluted region in the world, with annual surface mean concentrations reaching 52.2 ppb (parts per billion).