ludUO

186 submitted a report to the Security Council on children and armed conflict
based on the work of the UN envoy on the issue. The report covered conflicts
in 23 countries, of which 16 were on the Security Council agenda and seven—
Colombia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the southern border
provinces of Thailand and Yemen—were not. Pakistan objected to the report
stating that the UN envoy was acting outside its mandate by including Pakistan
and that the report included situations that were not conflicts but actions of
terrorists and criminals. Pakistan also abstained from voting on a UN General
Assembly resolution expressing readiness to impose sanctions on armed groups
persistently violating rights of children. Pakistan was heavily criticised for its
decision to abstain from voting especially by the UN special representative for
children and armed conflict, Human Rights Watch and the Watchlist on Children
and Armed Conflict, who called it a disservice to children and stressed that
victimised children needed UN attention regardless of their country’s inclusion
in the council’s agenda or not.
Children
Child labour
An official countrywide child labour survey - was not carried out this
year, despite commitments in 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics to complete
a fresh survey with the support of International Labour Organization in 2012.
Pakistan lags behind many other South Asian countries in recording latest
child labour figures – Bangladesh conducted the last survey on child labour in
2005-6, Sri Lanka in 2009 and Nepal in 2011, while Pakistan’s last survey was
conducted in 1996. US Labour Department’s 2011 Findings on the Worst
Forms of Child Labour, released in September 2012, showed Pakistan as one
of the 27 countries (out of a total of 144 countries assessed) that made no
advancement in efforts to remove the worst forms of child labour. According
The building blocks of a nation.