Sahil has been working since 1996 on child protection, especially against child sexual abuse (CSA). Sahil’s aims to develop an environment where every child should be safe, secure, and protected from all forms of violence especially against child sexual abuse. Sahil also provides free legal aid, emotional and psychological support to the victims.
Sahil compiles the statistics on child abuse cases in Cruel Numbers Report, This year 2022 January-December, daily 81 national and regional newspapers were monitored to collect data on Child Sexual Abuse, Abduction, Missing Children, and the cases of Child Marriages.
The findings of ‘Cruel Numbers 2022’ shows a total of 4253 cases of child abuse were reported in Pakistan. The report is based on the data collected from newspapers of all four provinces including Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit Baltistan (GB).
In the year 2022, the analysis of the data shows that a total of 2123 child sexual abuse (CSA) cases, 712 cases were reported of sodomy, 612 cases were rape, 576 were the attempt of CSA, 109 cases of pornography and CSA, 81 cases were murder after CSA, and 33 cases were reported of incest. Also, 1834 cases were reported of abduction, whereas 428 cases were reported of missing children, and 46 cases were reported of child marriages.
The data collected from January to December 2022 tells us that more than 12 children were subjected to sexual abuse on average every day, in comparison to 10 children per day in the last year’s January-December 2021 report.
The statistics of Cruel Numbers data shows that out of the total 4253 reported cases, (2325) 55% of victims were girls and (1928) 45% were boys.
The analysis of age group shows that like previous years children are most vulnerable to abuse in the age group of 6-15 years, in which more boys than girls victims were reported. Moreover, children as young as 0-5 years are also abused.
Provincial divide statistics show that 71% cases were reported from Punjab, 15% cases from Sindh, 8% cases from Islamabad capital territory, 4% cases from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and 2% cases from Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit Baltistan (GB).
In the Year 2022, out of the total 4253 reported cases, 2271(53%) cases were reported from urban areas and 1982(47%) cases were reported from urban areas.
In the year 2022, out of the total of reported cases, 89% were registered with the police.
