Dawn Editorial 12 October 2020

Another Zainab

ANOTHER year, another Zainab — two little girls who shared a name and met the same terrible fate. In 2018, it was an eight-year-old who was abducted, raped and murdered in Kasur. This time, it is a two-and-a-half-year-old violated and slain in Charsadda. She had gone out to play with other children when she was kidnapped; her body was found in a field the next day. Of course, there have been many more such victims. To list but some from the last few weeks alone: five-year-old Mawrah, raped and killed in Karachi, her body torched and discarded on a garbage heap; an eight-year-old boy sodomised and murdered, also in Karachi; and a 12-year-old boy gang raped by five men in Jhang who was rescued by his father.

Looking further back, who can forget the Kasur child porn scandal in 2015, which has been followed by more incidents of child rape in the district, making it almost a byword for this heinous crime? That episode laid to rest the fanciful notion that depravity in this society could not plumb such depths as to profit off the bodies of innocent children, let alone snuff out their lives. However, it was in January 2018, when the story of the horrors visited upon Zainab in Kasur sparked national outrage — particularly when it was learnt that 12 girls before her had also been raped and killed in the area — that it seemed a corner had been turned. The public had had enough of the impunity with which child rapists acted and of the police’s lackadaisical, often callous, approach towards bringing perpetrators to book. Nevertheless, it took over two years before the Zainab Alert, Recovery and Response Act was passed. The purpose of the much-needed legislation is to expedite procedures and synchronise the workings of various bodies responsible for recovering missing and abducted children. It also mandates the setting up of a helpline and the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Agency to send out alerts upon receiving information that a child has gone missing. According to research in the US, in 76pc of the child homicides studied, the minor was dead within three hours of abduction, and in 88.5pc of the cases, the child was dead within 24 hours. There is thus in most cases a very small window of opportunity to save a child’s life. An alert effectively used can be a critical tool.

A good piece of legislation, ZARRA must be implemented without any delay. Otherwise it will be no better than the existing child protection laws in the country that have no practical footprint. Also, given that abusers are often people known to the victims, there must be more open conversations in schools with students about sexual violence. Prudishness will only leave our young ones vulnerable to the monsters amongst us.

Cotton output

PAKISTAN is set — yet again — to miss this year’s official cotton production target of over 10m bales by a wide margin if the crop arrivals at the ginning factories are anything to go by. The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association reported a 35pc decline in cotton arrivals by Oct 3. If the trend persists, it will mean that the crop output this year will be half its peak of some 14m bales achieved about a decade ago. Many factors are to blame for the consistently dismal performance of the cotton crop, which supplies raw material to the country’s $13bn export-oriented textile industry. However, government policies allowing establishment of sugar mills in the cotton belt, lack of research in the development of new seed varieties, growers’ increasing expenditure on fertilisers and insecticides, and climate change are among the major reasons behind the dwindling crop output in recent years. The situation has forced the Senate chairman to take notice of the plight of cotton growers and ginners and ask the upper house panel on commerce to prepare a comprehensive report. What that means for the future of the crop, which helps the country fetch about 60pc of its export revenues annually, is not clear yet.

The government is aware of the situation but hasn’t implemented any effective measures to reverse the trend of falling production and deteriorating product quality, meaning that the country’s economy will continue to pay a heavy price for this official neglect. It also means that textile exporters will become more reliant on imported cotton in the coming years to meet their requirements at the expense of their international competitiveness and foreign exchange, which is already in short supply. It is unfortunate that the country is watching the destruction of one of its major crops at a time when other cotton-producing nations have dramatically increased their productivity and improved the quality of their crop by investing in the latest seed technology over the last two decades. Although the majority of Pakistani farmers also switched to Bt cotton many years back, the adoption of poor-quality, uncertified genetically modified varieties in an unregulated market has done great harm to the cotton economy instead of helping it. If the government wants to protect the country’s textile exports, it will have to invest substantially in seed research to develop disease-resistant and high-yield varieties to once again make cotton an attractive, profitable crop for farmers.

Nobel for WFP

THE Nobel Peace Prize often goes to statesmen and activists who have done great service to the cause of peace in the world. However, this year the Norwegian committee that decides the prize went for an unusual winner: the UN’s World Food Programme. The choice of winner indicates the seriousness hunger poses to world peace; in the words of the committee chair, “the link between hunger and armed conflict is a vicious circle”, adding that while conflict leads to food insecurity, lack of access or availability of food can also stir up conflict. The WFP helped feed 97m people last year, particularly in Yemen, as well as other troubled regions such as South Sudan and Congo. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic and the global recession it has engendered risks pushing between 83m and 132m people into hunger. As the WFP’s head warned earlier this year, the world is facing “multiple famines of biblical proportions”. While poorer states and conflict zones have been hit hard by hunger due to the pandemic, even richer nations are not immune. For example, shocking images of serpentine breadlines in the US — the world’s number one economy — over the last few months illustrate the depth of the problem.

As for how to address this key issue, there are no easy answers. While the WFP must be commended for stepping in to feed millions of vulnerable people, the root causes — conflict, inequality, poverty — that fuel global hunger must be addressed. Ideally, the destructive cycle of conflict and hunger must be broken. In places like Yemen this is possible if the powerful actors involved in this brutal war show the resolve to cease hostilities. Tackling food waste can be another solution, as over a billion tonnes of food are wasted every year. And considering that the global economy will be in frail health for the foreseeable future, social safety nets must be put in place to ensure that the poorest and the weakest in the world don’t go to sleep hungry.