Nelson Mandela has said “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”. If we construct a data base around the current wave of child abuse brutalities reported in the recent past, we shocked to notice social and moral degradedness of our society. In which newborn babies are found from the waste depots, teenagers are kidnapped on the way to chocolate shops and school going children are raped and murdered.
The quality of content and discourse of Mass Media including print, broadcast and citizen journalism is not so good due to multiplefactors in Pakistan nowadays. Religious servicers has bifurcated the religious doctrine in two contradictory categories,worldlylife is confined to materialistic practices and religious activities are only limited to rewards after death. Sectarianism and extremism is sponsored and financedin over country by different power players for their own vested interests.
State controlled media has been replaced to Saeth controlled media (traditional business man). Breaking news culture of the newsrooms and journalistic readiness always prefers sensational reporting over credible reporting and profit hungry media masters sacrifice editorial content over commercial content. Hooking more and more audience is become the ultimate objective of corporate mass media to receive advertisements and to generate more revenues.
In this race of rating mass media start glorifying violence, terrorism, consumerism and obscenity for their commercial objectives at the same time letting down the ethical guidelines and code of conducts which are designed for media persons and media houses. In addition to politician’s statement based journalism Pakistani mass media give maximum space to the criminals and crime related stories but after 9/11 crime stories has been framed around global terror campaign and terror stories are become the selling fodder for media houses.
All these factors become the cause to wipe out rational attitude and logical thinking from our society and those societies who sacrificed rational attitude and logical thinking are deteriorated morally, divested ethically and irresponsible socially. Which ultimately promote belief system over educational learning, dreams after death over gift of existence, fundamentalism over development and advancement, sectarianism over diversity of thoughts, bullets over ballots and terrorism over humanitarianism in our society?
In the third world countries like Pakistan sexual child abuse is considered as only kind of abuse while this is not only but extreme and worst kind of child abuse. In the developed countries literacy campaigns have been launched to create awareness in the society about different kinds; physical, emotional, neglect and corporate child abuse their symptoms and training workshops of journalists while dealing with the victims of child abuse casesin collaboration withdoctors,teachers to save the children from any kind of abuse in future.
The current wave of child abuse in the third world countries is an eye opening for social activists child health & child rights organizations that child abuse is worst violation of child rights and more lethal than child diseases. There is a dire need to launch a literacy campaign in third world countries like Pakistan to create awareness about the different kind of child abuses; physical, sexual, emotional, neglect and corporate child abuse.
1. Physical abuse involves hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating or otherwise causing physical harm to a child.
2. Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional ill treatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent effects on the child’s emotional development, and may involve:
· Conveying to a child that s/he is worthless, unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as s/he meets the needs of another person.
· Imposing developmentally inappropriate expectations e.g. interactions beyond the child’s developmental capability, overprotection, limitation of exploration and learning, preventing the child from participation in normal social interaction
· Causing a child to feel frightened or in danger e.g. witnessing domestic violence, seeing or hearing the ill treatment of another
3. Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child to take part in sexual actions.
4. Neglect involves the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health and development.
· Provide adequate food, clothing or shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment)
· Protect from physical and emotional harm or danger
· Meet or respond to basic emotional needs
· Ensure adequate supervision including the use of adequate care-takers
· Ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment
· Ensure that her/his educational needs are met
· Ensure her / his opportunities for intellectual stimulation are met
5. Corporate Child Abusechildren may be assaulted, diseased, or killed by pervasive corporate drugs, junk-foods and beverages, perverted by mindless violence in multiple modes, deployed as dead-end labor with no benefits, and then dumped into a corporate future of debt enslavement and meaningless work.
Development sector should step forward to save the children from every kind of brutality against them in collaboration with media institutions, doctors and journalists. Each and every person of society can play its role to save the children but especially teachers and journalist can play their vital role to educate the parents and to literate the society about different types of child abuse and their impact on the growth and socialization of the children and social conscious as a whole.
