Another day, another vulnerable group of human beings happens to be abused. Most of the time, children; the rest of the time, women. And almost every time, it is men who hunt fearlessly.

Incidents of child abuse and women’s harassment are not uncommon in Pakistan. Working women are sub­jected to constant harassment in public and at their workplaces, while those confined to homes face do­mestic violence, honour killings, or punishment for giving birth to female children. Gender-based discrim­ination continues to strip women of their rights, prop­erty, and opportunities merely because of their gender.

Child abuse often becomes an offence of dual nature, encom­passing both child molestation and gender-based discrimination when it is directed towards minor girls. In general, in Pakistan, child abuse takes various forms, such as neglect, and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Although child abuse has been rampant for a long time, children’s right to lead a life free from abuse and neglect has never been on the state’s agenda. The recent case of Shabbir Ahmed, a street vendor in Karachi’s Qayyumabad, is chill­ing. He confessed to abusing nearly a hundred minor girls over nine years. It was revealed that police had recovered a diary con­taining names and records of the victims, and a USB with almost 400 objectionable video clips involving 100 minor girls.

Pakistan has experienced this pattern twice before. Once in the late 1990s, when Javed Iqbal, one of the world’s most notorious serial killers, like Shabbir, maintained similar records of the chil­dren he sexually abused and killed in Lahore. And again in 2015, when Kasur witnessed an organised child sexual abuse scandal in which a gang of 20–25 men forced nearly 300 children, most­ly boys, into sexual acts that were filmed to produce pornography and extort families. In all three episodes—Lahore, Kasur, and Ka­rachi—the response of police, parents, and neighbours was strik­ingly similar: silence, negligence, and ignorance. No police officer sensed crime, parents overlooked signs, and neighbours failed to notice anything suspicious. The neglect of children—first by par­ents, second by neighbours, and lastly by the state—helps molest­ers keep abusing children until some divine help rescues them. Only then do sick-minded abusers go behind bars.

To understand the roots of such crimes, the minds of rapists and offenders must be analysed—a dimension missing in Paki­stan’s criminal justice system. Getting rid of the criminal is not the same as getting rid of the crime. Mere trials do not mend so­ciety when the problem lies within it. The system must not only enforce the laws but also mend the derailed society by learn­ing from such inherently paedophile-cum-patriarchal offenders. Why, then, is there little reliance on psychology, modern science, and technology in our courts, despite their potential to help un­cover the true rationale behind child abuse?

High-profile cases like those discussed above do not require in­quiries into why, where, when, who else, and, in the end, hanging the accused. Rather, they are social, political, psychological, and economic subjects of study to find where the problem lies. Under­standing what triggers such behaviour is as important as punish­ing the perpetrators. But that too should be aimed at rehabilita­tion, deterrence, and incapacitation of such heinous crimes.

Painfully, Pakistan has no reliable official records or statistical data on child labour, domestic servitude, neglect, trafficking, begging and corporal punishments in madrasas and schools. According to Sahil, an NGO, an average of 12 children were subjected to sexual abuse every day in 2023. That means every second hour, a child was mo­lested. Another Karachi-based NGO, Roshni Helpline, reveals that in 2024 alone, 3,070 cases of missing children were reported; while most were eventually recovered, the whereabouts of 35 remain unknown. This figure only reflects reported cases; the unreport­ed number is likely far higher, concealed under social stigma, weak monitoring mechanisms, and the absence of a centralised database. Meanwhile, 25.3 million out-of-school children await the state’s re­sponse to their right to education. But when the state fails to guar­antee classrooms, predators find opportunities, and denial of edu­cation becomes a direct enabler of abuse, violence, and molestation.

The more outrageous and inhuman the act of child abuse is, the more the state and civil society have failed to protect children in Pakistan. The same is the case with female harassment. The gov­ernment lacks authentic data and fails to develop policies for col­lecting concrete statistics. Many cases remain unreported. Laws against rape and child marriage remain ineffective due to sys­temic challenges. Thus, no significant efforts are made to stop re­curring casualties among children and women.

Until the state wakes up to take steps—amending laws, creat­ing therapeutic prisons, duly implementing, punishing and exe­cuting criminals, and inculcating a sense of good touch and bad touch in the curriculum—it is society itself that has to break the chains of such abuses and harassments, by fostering child–par­ent dialogue, raising awareness of child rights, equality regard­less of gender, reporting what is unreported, and voicing what is reported but not adequately or legally addressed.

The writer is a law undergrad at Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University of Law (SZABUL) Karachi. He can be reached at muneerhussain.szabul@gmail.com.

Note: This article first appeared in The Nation on September 20, 2025.