From PIMS to APS, Who Will Protect Children in Pakistan?

Yesterday, Pakistan lost fourteen newborn babies at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad. Fourteen little lives, some of them only hours or days old, disappeared in a fire inside a hospital where their parents had taken them believing they were safe. Reports say only one of the infants in the nursery survived. The fire broke out in the Mother and Child Health Ward, and authorities have ordered an investigation into what caused it and whether safety arrangements were adequate.

Imagine the grief of a mother who had just given birth. Imagine a father standing outside a hospital waiting to hear that his child is alive, only to be told that there is no child to take home. Imagine parents who had dreamed of hearing their baby’s first cry, watching their child grow, holding that tiny hand and celebrating a first birthday, now being asked to identify a body.

These were not children standing in a battlefield. They were newborns lying in incubators in a government hospital. They could not run. They could not scream for help. They could not save themselves. They depended entirely on the adults and the system around them.

And that is what makes this tragedy so painful.

The question is not only how the fire started. The bigger question is why a modern capital city hospital could not protect helpless newborns from a foreseeable emergency. Why are fire safety, emergency exits, equipment maintenance and evacuation systems treated as things to be investigated after people die rather than requirements that must be guaranteed before patients enter a hospital?

This is not the first time Pakistan has mourned children because institutions failed to protect them.

Our children are dying on the roads. They are being abused and raped. They are being abducted and murdered. They have been killed in schools and school buses. They have died because buildings were unsafe, because emergency systems failed and because institutions responsible for their safety were incapable of preventing tragedy.

Sahil’s 2025 data recorded 3,630 reported cases of child abuse across Pakistan, more than nine cases every day. The organisation itself makes clear that these are reported cases and therefore do not represent the full scale of abuse taking place in the country.

Among those reported cases were 522 rapes, 596 cases of sodomy, 108 gang-rape cases and 58 incidents in which children were murdered after sexual abuse. There were also 1,107 reported cases of child abduction and 365 cases of missing children.

Behind every number is a human being.

There is a little girl who may never again feel safe around an adult.

There is a boy whose childhood has been stolen by someone who should have protected him.

There is a mother sitting awake through the night waiting for a missing child.

There is a father who keeps looking at the door because somewhere inside him he still believes his son or daughter will walk back home.

And then there are the children who never came home.

Road accidents have become another silent killer. In Karachi alone, 68 children were among those killed in traffic accidents during the first seven months of 2025. Hundreds of families in one city alone were left mourning people killed on roads that are supposed to carry citizens safely to their destinations.

Yet road safety remains largely reactive. We count the dead after an accident instead of asking how many deaths could have been prevented by proper traffic enforcement, safer school routes, functioning pedestrian crossings, speed controls and responsible driving.

There is something deeply disturbing about the way we have normalised children’s deaths.When a child dies in an accident, we call it an accident.When a child is raped, we call it a crime.When a hospital catches fire, we call it a tragedy.

When a school is attacked, we call it terrorism.But sometimes these words allow us to avoid the more uncomfortable question: who failed to protect that child? Governments cannot prevent every crime, every natural disaster or every act of terrorism. No state can promise that no child will ever die. But a functioning government is expected to reduce preventable risks, enforce safety standards, investigate negligence and make institutions accountable.

That is the difference between an unavoidable tragedy and a preventable one. The tragedy at PIMS therefore cannot end with condolences, suspensions and another inquiry whose report eventually disappears from public memory. The families deserve to know what happened. They deserve to know whether equipment failed, whether safety procedures were followed, whether staff were present and whether those babies could have been saved.

And if they could have been saved, someone must answer for their deaths. But perhaps the most painful part of Pakistan’s story is that we have been asking the same question for years.

Who will protect our children?

We asked it after the rape and murder of children. We asked it after school attacks.We asked it after children were killed on roads. We asked for it after fires and buildings collapses .

We asked for it after every child disappeared.

And on 16 December 2014, Pakistan asked that question with a grief so enormous that an entire nation seemed to stop breathing. The Army Public School in Peshawar was attacked by Taliban militants. More than 140 people were killed, including 132 schoolchildren. It remains one of the darkest days in Pakistan’s history. Those children had gone to school to study.

Some were thinking about examinations. Some were probably waiting for lunch. Some may have been thinking about what they would become when they grew up.

A doctor. An engineer. A soldier. A teacher. A journalist. A pilot. A father. A mother. They had futures. The Taliban took those futures away. But the tragedy of APS Peshawar should never be remembered merely as a terrorist attack. It should also be remembered as a test of the state’s promise to protect its children. Those children were not statistics. They were somebody’s sons and daughters. They were somebody’s entire world.

And now, twelve years later, we are still standing beside the graves of children and asking ourselves why we continue to lose them. Yesterday, fourteen newborns died in a hospital. In 2014, more than a hundred schoolchildren were murdered in their classrooms. Between those two tragedies lies a painful story of a country that too often becomes active only after children have died.

We investigated after the fire. We mourn after the murder. We reform after the attack. We promise accountability after the tragedy. But children need protection before the tragedy.

A government is not judged only by the speeches it makes when citizens die. It is judged by the systems it builds so that citizens, especially its children, do not die needlessly. Pakistan’s children deserve better than condolences.

They deserve safe hospitals. They deserve safe schools. They deserve safe roads. They deserve protection from predators. They deserve justice when they are harmed. And they deserve a government capable of doing something more than arriving after the ambulance has left and the bodies have been counted.

Yesterday, fourteen newborns were unable to speak for themselves. On 16 December 2014, the children of APS Peshawar were unable to speak for themselves. Perhaps the responsibility now belongs to all of us. To ask, loudly and without fear: How many more children must die before the state becomes capable of protecting them?

How many more mothers must bury their children? How many more fathers must stand outside hospitals, schools and police stations waiting for answers?

And how many more times will Pakistan say “we are sorry” when what these families actually need is “we will make sure this never happens again”?

A nation that cannot protect its children cannot claim that its future is secure. The fourteen newborns of PIMS and the children of APS Peshawar belong to different generations and died under completely different circumstances.

But their silence leaves us with the same question,  Who will save Pakistan’s children? What’s the purpose of the National commission for child rights and all children welfare organisations which have failed to check safety measures for children everywhere they could be saved.