Sahil — a local NGO working against child abuse — has revealed that about 2,211 child abuse cases were documented in the first six months of 2022. The data about sexual abuse involving minors (both genders) was gathered from 79 local newspapers dating from January to June and classified as rape, sodomy, early marriages, and child abduction for sexual abuse.
According to the report, 1,564 cases were recorded in Punjab, 338 in Sindh, 199 cases in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 77 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 23 in Balochistan, and 10 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). Also, 52 percent of cases were from urban areas while 48 percent were from rural regions.
During the period under review, Sahil recorded around 1,170 incidents of sexual assault, 803 cases of kidnapping, 212 cases of missing children, and 26 cases of child marriages.
The data also indicated that children aged 6 to 15 were consistently the most vulnerable segment. Furthermore, a total of 715 children aged 11 to 15 years and 401 children aged 6 to 10 years were sexually abused in the first six months of this year.
Meanwhile, a gender analysis of the cases showed that the child abuse cases involving girls outnumbered those involving boys, as the former constituted for 1,207 cases and the latter 1,004.
Furthermore, approximately 803 children were abducted. This included 298 boys and 243 girls who were reportedly raped or sodomized. Furthermore, the number of gang rape and sodomy incidents was also unusually high, with 128 minors (41 girls and 87 boys) subjected to physical torture.
An earlier report by the same organization also revealed that around 3,852 children (2,068 girls and 1,784 boys) were sexually abused across Pakistan last year.