Submitted by crinadmin on
Qindeel Shujaat, 31, is Executive director of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) in Pakistan. SPARC is one of the few civil society organisations in Pakistan specializing in advocacy on child rights, supporting awareness raising, research, capacity building and service delivery. From its initial focus on protecting breastfeeding against the marketing of baby milks and foods, SPARC expanded its work to include other issues such as child labour, juvenile justice, education and violence against children
Pakistan has complex problems. Children not going to school is the root of a lot of these problems, because if they are in class that is where their energy is diverted. There are 80 million children in Pakistan, and if half are not going to school that is a huge number looking for stimulation. There is such a big problem with child labour here. The worst affected are always children. I used to work in the computer business. It makes me proud to just be contributing to the issue of child rights. There’s a lot missing from the child rights movement in Pakistan. One of the problems is that the activism is missing. There is insufficient capacity too; for a start there is no formal training so you get people who have been working for ten years and still don’t know a lot about an issue. Good people often move to international organisations A lot of donors want charities to work as corporate entities, but then the achievements aren’t as good in human and child rights. There is a need for reform of civil society in Pakistan. We need to bring children into everything we do – we sometimes think we know everything but children are not only the future, they are the present too. The CRC has not made a huge difference. It has set wonderful guidelines, but governments are so slow to implement and the reporting system is weak. If I was not working in child rights, I think I would still be working in development, maybe the labour rights movement. The best thing about my job is that sometimes you see that you are making a difference. The worst thing is that you don’t see the results immediately. I think I am a quite a good visionary. We are working on bringing out some commercial music related to child rights – it is not clearly about child rights but it’s a good way to raise the issue and reach lots of people without being too prescriptive. If I could sum up child rights, I would say it is about love, care and equality.