Child Protection Laws.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is planning to amend laws pertaining to child protection and welfare. The previous legislation, KP Child Protection and Welfare (Amendment) Act 2010 sentenced a person convicted of sexually abusing a child faces up to 14 years in imprisonment. The new legislation in the works, titled KP Child Protection and Welfare (Amendment) Act 2020, is harsher; it incorporates more severe punishments including life imprisonment and Rs5 million fine and also proposes the death penalty for organ traffickers. According to some sources, the bill even goes as far as to stipulate that the proceedings of the execution, in case of a sentence of death, shall be recorded by audio-visual means and such recordings would be made accessible to the public, as a way to once again highlight just how seriously the government takes crimes against children.

These reforms are right in a sense; there was a need for harsher sentences against offenders. The debate about whether the death penalty should be resorted to in the worst of cases, like child sexual abuse, has been ongoing at the same time that more and more cases of rape and sexual assault against minors are reported. Yet the question here should not just be one of morality, but also of effectiveness. If the death penalty is...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT