Do Innocent Lives Matter Equally?

By Tehmina Rafiq

Pakistan’s Constitution promises equality, dignity and protection. The question is why these promises so often fail the country’s most vulnerable children.

There is a question that Pakistan must confront honestly: do innocent lives matter equally? Constitutionally, the answer should be beyond dispute. Article 25 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973, guarantees that all citizens are equal before the law and are entitled to the equal protection of the law. More significantly, Article 25(3) permits the State to make special provisions to protect women and children. This constitutional distinction is particularly important because equality does not always mean treating everyone identically. Children cannot be expected to defend themselves against poverty, violence, exploitation, or institutional neglect in the same manner as adults. Those who are weaker and more vulnerable often require greater protection if they are to enjoy equality in any meaningful sense.

Yet, the lived experience of thousands of children in Pakistan presents a profoundly different picture. A child born into a wealthy family may enjoy access to quality education, healthcare, security and legal protection, while another child, perhaps born only a few kilometres away, may spend the day begging at a traffic signal, working at a brick kiln or workshop, cleaning a private home or struggling to survive on the streets. Formally, both may be equal before the law, but the fundamental question remains: are they equally protected by the law? This is a question that Pakistan’s constitutional, political, and social institutions must confront with honesty.

We see children subjected to violence and sexual abuse. We hear of children being kidnapped from places where they should have been safest. We see children working when they should be studying, begging when they should be playing, and surviving in conditions that deprive them of the most basic elements of a dignified childhood. We also see children entering the criminal justice system and, in some instances, remaining behind bars for prolonged periods. And then, as a society, we move on.

Perhaps the greatest danger is not merely the existence of these tragedies but their gradual normalization. The child begging at a traffic signal becomes part of the urban landscape. The child working in a private home becomes “help”. The child working at a brick kiln becomes an economic necessity. The child deprived of school becomes a predictable victim of poverty. The child subjected to abuse becomes a private family matter. And the child behind bars becomes merely an accused person. Through this gradual process of normalization, we cease to see children as children and begin to accept their suffering as an unavoidable feature of society.

Article 25 is not merely a decorative constitutional declaration of formal equality. The guarantee of equality before the law and equal protection of the law carries a deeper moral and constitutional obligation. It requires the State to ensure that the protection of law does not become a privilege available only to those who possess wealth, influence and social connections. What does equality mean to a child who cannot afford to attend school? What does equal protection mean to a child whose family lacks the resources to seek justice? What does constitutional dignity mean to a child subjected to exploitation or abuse? And what does the right to life mean to a child who survives physically but is denied the conditions necessary for a meaningful and dignified human existence?

The uncomfortable reality is that Pakistan has developed an elaborate constitutional and legal vocabulary of rights while frequently failing to translate those rights into the lives of those who need them most. The Constitution promises equality, but inequality often begins at birth. It promises dignity, but millions experience circumstances that compromise that dignity every day. It promises protection, but vulnerable children frequently discover that the institutions created for their welfare are distant, ineffective or inaccessible. The gap between constitutional aspiration and social reality has consequently become one of Pakistan’s most serious failures of governance.

Article 11(3) of the Constitution prohibits the employment of children below the age of fourteen years in factories, mines and hazardous employment, while Article 25A requires the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of five and sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law. These provisions expose a serious contradiction that Pakistan must confront. How can a child simultaneously enjoy a constitutional right to compulsory education and be compelled by economic circumstances to work? The child working in a workshop is not simply earning a livelihood; that child may be losing an education. The child working at a brick kiln is not merely contributing to a family income; that child may be sacrificing health, development and an irreplaceable childhood.

Poverty undoubtedly places enormous pressure upon families, but poverty cannot become a constitutional justification for child exploitation. Parents undoubtedly have responsibilities towards their children, but the State cannot escape its constitutional obligations by placing the entire burden upon families struggling for survival. When a child is compelled to work because the family cannot survive otherwise, the question should not simply be why the parents allowed it. The more important question is: what alternatives did the State provide? Was the family offered meaningful social protection? Was the child provided genuine access to quality education? Were laws against exploitative labour effectively enforced? Were employers held accountable? A government cannot claim to protect children merely by passing legislation while allowing economic and social conditions to make violations of that legislation inevitable.

Article 9 of the Constitution guarantees the right to life and liberty. However, constitutional life cannot be reduced to the mere biological act of survival. For a child, the right to life must include the opportunity to grow, learn, develop and live without fear of violence, exploitation and neglect. This principle must be read alongside Article 14, which declares the dignity of man to be inviolable. Human dignity does not begin when a person reaches adulthood. A child possesses dignity. The child begging on the streets possesses dignity. The child working in hazardous conditions possesses dignity. The child living in poverty possesses dignity. And the child accused of an offence and placed within the criminal justice system also possesses dignity.

The constitutional protection of dignity cannot depend upon social status or economic usefulness. Yet Pakistan frequently appears to operate according to an unspoken hierarchy of human worth. The child of privilege often receives protection as a matter of expectation, whereas the child of poverty may receive attention only when a tragedy becomes sufficiently visible to attract public outrage. This is not equality. It is selective compassion, and selective compassion cannot become a substitute for constitutional responsibility.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing questions concerns children who enter the criminal justice system. A child does not cease to be a child merely because he or she has been accused of committing an offence. Article 10A guarantees the right to a fair trial and due process, but fairness requires far more than the formal conduct of legal proceedings. A child who lacks effective legal representation, remains in detention for prolonged periods, faces delayed proceedings or is confined in inappropriate conditions cannot easily be said to have received the full protection of constitutional justice.

The purpose of a juvenile justice system cannot simply be to reproduce the harshness and failures of the adult criminal justice system. Children possess a greater capacity for reform, rehabilitation and reintegration into society. A system that destroys their future in the name of punishment may ultimately create greater social harm. The State must, therefore, ask whether it is merely processing children through the criminal justice system or genuinely attempting to rehabilitate them. Justice that ignores the special vulnerability and developmental needs of childhood cannot truly be called justice.

The State cannot escape responsibility for these failures. Article 35 of the Constitution directs the State to protect the family, the mother and the child, while the broader constitutional framework also emphasises education, social justice and public welfare. The State makes laws, allocates public resources, regulates educational institutions and workplaces, supervises detention and correctional facilities, establishes child protection mechanisms and administers the justice system. Therefore, when children remain vulnerable despite the existence of laws and institutions, the State cannot simply blame poverty, parents or society. It must also examine its own failures.

Too often, however, the establishment of an institution is presented as the solution to a problem. A child protection authority is created, a commission is established, a policy is announced, a conference is organized, a seminar is held, and a report is published. Then the machinery moves on. But a child does not need another policy document if there is no effective mechanism capable of rescuing him or her from exploitation. A child does not need another seminar if the institution responsible for protection lacks resources, capacity or accountability. Children do not need constitutional promises delivered through speeches; they need those promises to operate in their daily lives.

The true measure of a civilized society is not how it treats its most powerful citizens. It is how it treats those who cannot protect themselves. Children possess little political influence. They do not vote, finance political campaigns, control institutions or possess the economic resources necessary to demand accountability. Perhaps this is precisely why their suffering is so easily ignored. Yet constitutional democracy demands that the powerless be protected against the indifference of the powerful. That is the deeper meaning of equal protection under Article 25.

Article 25 should not remain an elegant constitutional provision invoked in courtrooms and academic discussions while millions of children experience profound inequality outside them. Its promise must reach the child at the traffic signal, the child working at the brick kiln, the child deprived of education, the child subjected to abuse, the child living in an institution, and the child behind bars. Constitutional rights become meaningful only when they reach those who are least capable of claiming them for themselves.

Pakistan must also stop treating child protection as an act of charity. It is a constitutional obligation and an essential component of nation-building. Every child provided with quality education represents a potential teacher, doctor, lawyer, scientist, entrepreneur or public servant. Every child protected from exploitation represents a citizen whose potential has not been sacrificed to poverty. Every child protected from violence represents a life spared the possibility of lifelong trauma. Every child rehabilitated rather than unnecessarily incarcerated represents an opportunity to build a future rather than destroy one.

The Constitution of Pakistan does not require another amendment before the country can begin protecting its children more effectively. The constitutional framework already exists. Article 9 protects life and liberty. Article 10A guarantees fair trial and due process. Article 11(3) prohibits the employment of children in prohibited forms of labour. Article 14 protects human dignity. Article 25 guarantees equality and equal protection of the law, while Article 25(3) expressly permits special measures to protect children. Article 25A recognizes free and compulsory education as a constitutional responsibility, and Article 35 directs the State to protect the child. The constitutional promises, therefore, already exist. The laws also exist. The institutions, at least in many cases, have been created. The more difficult question is whether the political will and institutional commitment necessary to implement these constitutional promises genuinely exist.

Children do not choose the families into which they are born. They do not choose poverty. They do not choose exploitation, abuse or institutional neglect. They do not choose illiteracy, violence or the circumstances that make them vulnerable. They inherit the consequences of decisions made—and failures committed—by adults.

If we genuinely believe that every human being possesses equal worth, then innocent lives must matter equally. Not only when a tragedy becomes national news. Not only when the victim belongs to a powerful or influential family. Not only when public outrage forces institutions to act. Every child, every day, everywhere deserves the equal protection, dignity, and opportunity promised by the Constitution. The child we ignore today is not merely a forgotten child. That child is tomorrow’s Pakistan. If we fail to protect the equality, dignity, education, and innocence of our children today, we should not be surprised when the future of Pakistan carries the scars of our collective—and constitutional—failure.