Child Rights
Children don’t – and can’t – speak for themselves. In many cases, they don’t even identify the exploitation, abuse and injustice perpetrated against them. And this exploitation can take worse of the forms one can think of. Also, more often than not, the children are deprived of their childhood and burdened with responsibilities which others are supposed to bear. Education remains a luxury which the majority cannot afford to acquire. In such a backdrop, others would have to come forth and speak – and even act – for them, and this is precisely what we do at the Nexus. On one hand, we are striving to equip all of them with education, and on the other, we are asserting their right to good health. Just to let you know, we were the first ones years ago, who raised an organised voice against serving young children freely with the sheesha huqqa, and got it banned in Islamabad. This endeavour later became the first step towards placing curbs on this menace by the Supreme Court of Pakistan years later. Our endeavours to educate them have been detailed in a separate section on this website. Not only education, we have been in forefronts to protect their rights to play as well. We did our bit to raise a voice for saving the (in)famous football ground of Islamabad from being encroached upon. We were the ones who had laid the foundation of SCHOOLYMPICS – the largest sporting events at schools’ level in the country. It started at Bahawalpur in 2016, was raised to the regional level in 2021, and then to the national level in 2022 when teams of other provinces as well AJK and GB and those representing private schools, special children, religious seminaries and transgenders were also invited to participate. We may also mention here, we have been pioneers of schools hockey league aimed at popularising the game of hockey in our children yet again and restore our lost glory at international level.
These initiatives might have been facing some hiccups lately yet one believes the saner minds would prevail. Meanwhile we would also be raising our voice for the same.
