NGO: One Child is Sexually Abused Every Two Hours in Pakistan

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Facts

  • According to the child welfare non-profit Sahil, an average of 12 children in Pakistan were subject to sexual abuse every day from January to June 2023, with a total of 2,227 victims so far this year.1
  • According to the data, collected from both news reports and direct reports to Sahil, girls accounted for 1,207 of the victims so far this year, boys made up 1,020, and over 47% fell within the six to 15-year-old age range. Within that range, 593 boys were sexually abused compared to 457 girls.2
  • Furthermore, a total of 53 pornographic cases were found on the dark web by the Federal Investigation Agency, of which "72[%] of victims were boys and 28[%] of victims were girls." Of the 2,531 abusers identified over the six-month period, most were either related to or known by the victims.1
  • The abuser was an acquaintance in 912 cases, a stranger in 498 cases, and both in 215 cases. Meanwhile, 16% of the crimes were committed at the "abuser’s place."1
  • The report added that 75% of cases were reported in the nation's most populated province, Punjab, with another 314 cases appearing in the southern Sindh province and 161 cases found in the federal territory of the national capital Islamabad.2
  • This comes after 1,170 cases of child sexual abuse, 803 cases of abduction, 212 cases of missing children, and 26 cases of child marriages were reported in Pakistan from January to June 2022, according to Sahil.3

Sources: 1DAWN, 2Al Jazeera, and 3The Express Tribune.

Narratives

  • Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by DW. Given that over 1.5M children are homeless in Pakistan and another 2.5M are in Islamic seminaries, Pakistani youth are extremely vulnerable to sexual abuse. Pakistan's culture of willful blindness, too, has played a role in this problem, as parents often stay quiet about ongoing familial abuse and authorities release suspects after their arrest. Both the government and the citizenry must face the fact that their country has been infected by these issues, and more must be done.
  • Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by The Daily Signal. While sexual abuse should be combatted anywhere it occurs, many may not know that the capital of the sex trafficking world is the US. As seen in Pakistan, though at an exponentially higher rate, tens of thousands of children in the US annually are forced into sex slavery to be victimized multiple times per day — also typically by a family member or someone they know. This is a global issue, but that doesn't mean we have the right to spotlight developing nations while ignoring the atrocities in the West.