Pakistan: What's fueling child sexual abuse in Punjab? – DW – 07
Dw.ComJul 26, 2023
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.
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.
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.
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.