Child Abuse on the Dark Web: An Impediment for SDGs
Since a child pornography scandal surfaced in 2015, Pakistan’s Kasur district has remained under the microscope. Despite the tightening of child protection laws in 2017, heightened execution of serial rapists and murderers in 2018, and the suspension of senior district police officers by the country’s Prime Minister in 2019, child abuse remains an unfortunate reality in Pakistan. According to Sahil, an NGO working to eradicate child abuse in the district, a total of 3832 cases of child abuse have been reported in the past year, representing an increase of 11% compared to figures documented in 2017.
The modus operandi is typical. The children are sexually molested in workshops or factories, where they spend at least 8–9 hours per day on average. They are blackmailed, and hence are unable to tell their families of the suffering. Others are abducted, drugged, video-taped while being raped, killed, and then dumped in the trash.
The Executive Director of the NGO, Manizeh Bano, stated that “The data of 6 months shows that there have been 40 cases of sexual abuse in Kasur, (…) Where are they? What has been done? What action has been taken? Who has actually even bothered to talk about these children? I am asking today, is this a network? And why this has not been investigated? We have mapped the Kasur district (…) you can see that the entire district is covered with sexual abuse cases. Where are we lacking in the ability to deal with this? Is it the police? Is it the power structures?”
On the 20th of November, Ayaz Sohail, a sentenced pedophile was arrested after a First Information Report (FIR) was registered by the mother of a 13-year old victim. Further investigation revealed that the offender had had worked with Save The Children UK, and gotten deported from the country over his association with a pornography ring in Romania. He later confessed that had raped a total of 30 children in the Kasur district, and uploaded videos on the dark web. Several sex offenders arrested from the district in the past have admitted the same, implying that the there is a pecuniary advantage attached to such abductions and sexual assaults.
According to the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), “(…) there are also people selling child pornography, illegal drugs, (…). They commonly take payment in the form of Bitcoin or other crypto-currency (…).”
The widespread distribution of sexual violence over the internet was also discussed during an event at the UN Headquarters on the 3rd of October. Bjorn Sellstrom from INTERPOL asserted that “We see younger and younger kids. And the younger the kids are, the more violent the abuse is, especially for boys”.
Dr. Tahira Rubab, a consultant psychiatrist claimed that “they are doing this with a business point of view. (…) They sexually abused girls and recorded the humiliating videos. The question is why? The answer is: for the international black market (Courtesy Pakistan Today).” Such statements can be adduced to explain that the child exploitation in Pakistan is incentivized by external entities.
Amidst other ambitious targets of the United Nations is 16.2, which aims to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children. The onus lies on the government and the UN bodies to ensure that such vices are eradicated. Why has the Government of Pakistan failed to deter the perpetrators in its own land? Why have UN agencies like UNICEF, who claim to be the front runners of child protection failed to curb the exploitation of innocent children since the past three years? Aren’t the Sustainable Development Goals and slogans of “Leaving No One Behind” of little value if they do not trickle down to benefit the most vulnerable groups?
