CHILDREN’S VULNERABILITY TO SEXUAL OFFENCES IN PAKISTAN: IDENTIFYING AND COMBATING THE ENABLING FACTORS IN THE CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY AND FAMILY CONTEXT

Abstract

Pakistan as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child needs to establish an integrated child protection system that protects the most vulnerable section of the community. The prevalence of child sexual abuse as a social policy and a public health concern has been alarming but it has been on a steady rise for Pakistan. This issue needs to be tackled with a two-pronged effort by identifying enabling factors to predator behaviour. This paper seeks to study the factors in a close-knit community that enable predatory behaviour and the measures taken at individual levels to safeguard children. The major challenge is the taboo nature of the issue and the gaps in the reporting of sexual offence incidences by the victims and the caretakers which this paper attempts to tackle through the draw suggestions. It builds on Finkelhor (1984) theoretical four preconditions model of child sexual abuse which sets conditions before the occurrence of abuse and expands it to the contextual factors of Pakistan that enable predators and put vulnerable children at high risk of sexual violence. Pakistan has a distinct collectivist culture with roots in ethnic identities and social capital based on brotherhood, community, and familial relations which play an enabling role. The devised methodology explores the policy implications from the experiences of mothers of children under the age of eighteen years of age through in-depth qualitative interviews.