By Iftikhar Mubarik
Punjab’s approval of a new Child Protection Policy is a long-awaited step. For years, civil society, practitioners, and child rights advocates have pointed out that fragmented laws and ad-hoc responses were insufficient to protect children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence. The new policy signals recognition at the provincial leadership level that child protection must be addressed in a more coherent and comprehensive manner. The real test, however, lies not in the policy’s language, but in how it is implemented.
Following the 18th Constitutional Amendment, child protection became a devolved responsibility, placing the primary obligation on provinces to enact their own legal frameworks, develop policies, and establish implementation mechanisms. Punjab’s Child Protection Policy must therefore be understood within Pakistan’s devolved governance framework, where provinces carry primary responsibility for policy design and execution. The question is no longer whether a policy is needed, but whether provincial systems are capable of translating policy intent into protection on the ground.
Child protection is inherently multi-sectoral. Responsibilities extend well beyond designated child protection bodies to include social welfare, health, education, literacy and special education, police, prosecution, labour, local government, and justice actors. The policy rightly acknowledges this reality by assigning a coordinating role to the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau, while recognising the responsibilities of other relevant departments in line with their respective mandates. This reflects a child protection system approach aligned with internationally recognised frameworks, which emphasise coordinated governance, clearly defined roles across sectors, and accountability that operates from provincial to district level. The policy’s emphasis on shared responsibility is therefore both timely and necessary.
Yet experience suggests that coordination is where many well-intentioned policies falter. In practice, departments rarely function as a coherent system.
They operate under separate rules of business, competing priorities, fragmented budget structures, and reporting lines that remain confined within individual departments rather than connected across the system. Formal coordination mechanisms backed by clear legal authority have historically been weak or absent. Where coordination arrangements do exist, they are often informal, under-resourced, or activated only in response to crises, rather than functioning as permanent and institutionalised systems. Without clear decision-making authority, defined responsibilities, and enforceable accountability, coordination risks remaining procedural rather than operational.
The new policy does propose provincial and district-level coordination and oversight mechanisms, which is a positive development. However, committees and technical working groups will only matter if they are empowered to do more than convene meetings. Coordination must translate into shared planning, joint problem-solving, functional referral pathways, and enforceable follow-up across departments. Information must move in real time across institutions, roles must be clear, and failures must be identifiable. Otherwise, coordination will remain dependent on personalities rather than systems.
Beyond coordination structures, implementation will also depend on whether child protection is embedded in the everyday practice of frontline institutions. The policy’s emphasis on integrating child protection into induction, pre-service, and professional training across sectors is therefore significant. Teachers, health workers, police officers, prosecutors, and social service professionals are often the first point of contact for at-risk children. If they are not equipped to recognise harm, respond appropriately, and activate referral pathways, even the strongest policies will remain abstract. Mainstreaming child protection into professional training is not an add-on; it is a prerequisite for turning policy commitments into real protection.
Equally important is the question of financing, which must be understood as part of implementation rather than a separate debate. Policy ambition without corresponding budgetary support creates a false sense of progress. An effective child protection system requires sustained investment in a trained child protection workforce, functional referral pathways supported by an efficient legal framework, safe shelter arrangements, psychosocial services, legal aid, and long-term rehabilitation linked to targeted social protection measures. These are not incidental expenditures; they are core system requirements that must be available at district level, where children actually encounter public institutions. Yet in practice, child protection financing often remains fragmented, thinly spread across multiple departments, or absorbed into broader social sector allocations without a clear and identifiable child protection budget line, limiting both visibility and accountability. Without deliberate alignment between policy responsibilities and budgetary allocations across sectors, implementation will remain uneven and fragile.
This matters because Punjab’s Child Protection Policy is not a discretionary initiative. Pakistan is a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which obliges the State to take legislative, administrative, and budgetary measures to realise children’s rights to the maximum extent of available resources. Article 19 of the Convention specifically requires the establishment of effective systems for prevention, identification, reporting, referral, treatment, and follow-up of child maltreatment, including sexual abuse. These obligations are reinforced by Sustainable Development Goal target 16.2, which calls for an end to all forms of violence against children. In this context, implementation, coordination, and resourcing are matters of compliance, not choice.
Punjab now has an opportunity to move from policy intent to system-level impact. Doing so will require treating coordination as a core governance function rather than an administrative formality, aligning responsibilities with budgets across sectors, and strengthening accountability mechanisms at both provincial and district levels. The success of the Child Protection Policy will not be measured by notifications issued or committees formed, but by whether children experience faster responses, safer pathways, and sustained protection. The policy has set the direction. Implementation will determine whether it delivers protection in practice. If pursued with seriousness and discipline, Punjab’s approach could also generate practical lessons for other provinces and territories navigating similar coordination, capacity, and accountability challenges within Pakistan’s devolved governance framework.
The writer is Executive Director of Search for Justice and has over 18 years of experience working on human rights and child rights. He can be reached at iftikhar.mubarik@sfjpk.org
