HATS of f to all special children and their parents. I hold them in great admiration, the first for their patience in facing their challenges uncomplainingly, and the second for giving unconditional love and care to their special offspring, seeking absolutely nothing in return.

Hats off also to the United Nations and those members who signed the two international human rights agreements that give special children special rights. They are the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). That would include Pakistan as well which has signed and ratified the two conventions.

I must add my very strong reservations here. On both occasions, when the two instruments were signed it was a PPP government that was in of fice and that took the initiative though its implementation record on this score has been dismal. It doesn`t absolve other parties who neglect the duties the conventions impose on all signatories. In such matters, it is the state that becomes accountable and it is shameful that children are the most neglected section of our population, irrespective of which party is in power.

To the great distress and disappointment of the parents of special children and their compatriots, these conventions have never provided the relief they were expected to.

Both conventions make special mention of the special child. Thus Article 23 of the convention on child rights states that all children with mental or physical disability will enjoy the right to full participation in the life of their community. It makes it mandatory for states to extend assistance to those who care for special children and their parents in order to facilitate the children`s access to their rights and so that their dignity is not violated.

The CRPD, too, recognises the need to adjust to the needs of special children as they grow physically. It speaks about adapting facilities to the physical needs of a growing child. Hence demanding more from our government is not unreasonable. It is the responsibility of the state to observe the commitments it had made by virtue of signing and ratifying human rights instruments.

There is a diverse variety of disabilities that are found in children all over the world and medical science has yet to discover the reasons for many of them. Hence it is not even possible to adopt preventive measures.

Broadly, disabilities can be classified into two groups. Some special children can be helped somewhat by being provided training and guidance to become self-reliant in fulfilling their own personal needs so that they are not totally dependent on others. Butthere are others whose disorders are so serious that they are beyond such assistance.

They are utterly dependent on their carers who are generally their parents with limited means. It is the families of special children in the second category who need support financial and in terms of f acilities.

I personally know of parents with special children who suffer both financially and emotionally. I feel that this negligence on the part of the government is simply unforgivable. The victims of this official callousness and neglect are invariably the innocent young ones who do not have a voice and are thus doubly handicapped.

Take the case of Mahira (not her real name), the daughter of a friend of modest means, who suffers from microcephaly issues that have not allowed her brain to develop normally. As a result, she is mentally challenged. On account of autonomic neuropathy, her body functions are alsoaffected. Her sweat glands do not work and she has no pain sensation in her extremities. Her self-hitting disorder over which she has no control is another challenge. Mah-ira needs constant supervision while she is awake, and she needs an air-conditioned environment if her body temperature is to be regulated.

Those who have cared for such children will understand how agonising it can be to have a special child suffering from such symptoms. The emotional stress the parents live with is bad enough. On top of that, for Mahira`s family, the electricity bill itself has become a big issue as the KE jacks up electricity charges regularly.

How can those managing the country help in such cases? In many ways. A programme on the pattern of the BISP and Ehsaas could be started to provide some financial support for such children. In cases where special facilities such as electricity/ gas are needed, concessions can be earmarked on utility bills for families of special children. All this is not difficult to organise since Nadra has a column for people with disabilities that should be able to identif y special children.

There is also a need to create public awareness about special children. It is not God`s wrath being visited on parents for past sins. This is a message that must be delivered to all sections of society. www.zubeidamustafa.com

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Consumers in Pakistan should exercise their purchasing power to nudge businesses to respect human rights & environment

Businesses, big and small, are primarily motivated by the desire to maximise profits for entrepreneurs and for their shareholders. While higher tiers of management are well rewarded for efficiency and the ability to deliver profits, workers who are vital to the production of goods and provision of services don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labour.

While labour gets paid modest wages generally, labour exploitation is rife in lower rungs of the supply chain, such as in the informal sector where much of the economic activity takes place in poorer countries like Pakistan. The informal sector provides employment and skill building opportunities to millions of Pakistanis. Yet, ensuring worker rights in a sector which is neither documented nor regulated is very elusive.

In fact, protecting labour rights, ensuring occupational health and safety, and preventing gender discrimination remain a challenge even within the formal sector. In addition to providing taxes, the formal sector is meant to be regulated to ensure that workers are treated fairly, and increasingly to alleviate environmental degradation. However, the inspection mechanisms in a country like ours leave much to be desired. Provincial labour departments are unable to ensure compliance with existing laws. Labour inspections are also infrequent and often superficial.

Corruption, inefficiency and the lack of adequate resources within the labour department, and the public sector more generally, is only one side of the problem. The other aspect of this problem, which gets even lesser attention, is the desperation of cash-starved countries to entice local and international manufacturers to invest in the economy, which often occurs by allowing regulatory mechanisms to remain lax instead of making them more vigilant.

In countries where the informal sector comprises a major proportion of the economy, labour rights need to be extended to all workers, not just those in the formal sector. There is an intrinsic connection between the formal and informal sector. In the garment industry, for example, the need to respect workers’ rights should not end at the factory gate. Basic labour and human rights need to be extended to the cotton fields where poor sharecroppers and daily waged agri-workers toil to produce cotton used by factories to make garments. Dyeing and many other processes of garment production are also subcontracted to the informal sector where there is no regulation. The same is true for many other industries which produce goods by the joint efforts of workers in the formal and informal sectors.

International agencies like the WTO, the World Bank, and the UN system need to increase pressure on multinational corporations to ensure labour and environmental standards in their supply chains or else the so-called race to the ‘bottom of the barrel’ will continue amongst poor countries desperate to attract FDI.

With assistance from UNDP, Pakistan has recently formulated an action plan on business and human rights. This plan will have to contend with complex ground realities and evolve over time to prevent human rights violations resulting from varied business activities. Taking adequate remedial measures in cases where such violations are found will be a major challenge as well. Civil society and the media can help operationalise this ambitious action plan by creating awareness about it, and by highlighting instances where violations are found.

The public at large has a vital role to play in holding businesses accountable for respecting the basic rights of their workers, and for paying heed to the environment. Ordinary customers in Pakistan also need to know they can exert vital influence on businesses — by exercising their purchasing power by rewarding or penalising businesses based on their evident treatment of workers or due to their environmental record. This sort of consumer pressure has compelled businesses to become more labour friendly and sustainable in the West, and it is high time that consumers became savvy enough to compel businesses to do the same in countries like our own.

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Forests over large areas with their own ecological impact disrupt weather patterns in their formation

But, not so for India? Give it a thought. They too are impacted by the same phenomenon in the same region and in the same period. Monsoons in fact make their way into Pakistan a month later than their advent in India — officially mid-June. And what we get and where we get in terms of the rainfall is greatly dependent on a large weather pattern which originates in Indian Rajasthan and the adjoining Pakistani region of Sindh and South Punjab but only after Monsoons have dispensed most of their load in India and if they still have some juice left in them. Usually, only a strong enough wave will make it to the western reaches of Pakistan. (Monsoons rain far more heavily in eastern parts of Pakistan than say Rawalpindi and rarely in Peshawar). Essentially the kicker of the pattern though is how deep is the Low in Rajasthan.

There is lot more to it for those who need to know more in how the Frontal Lows from the west augment the disturbance or how the very high altitude inter-tropical convergence zone interacts with the Polar mass. But leave that to the experts. For most of us this year all possible patterns intermingled to give us the deluge that we could count as a boon if we knew how to manage and control the impact or bane if we remain at the mercy of nature without the understanding or wherewithal to handle the floods we are reeling under. We though must view it from the angle of climate change and how may its adversity be mitigated.

Here is a simpler explanation: if you have ever lived on the Prairies — vast open grasslands without a tree in between for miles — you would notice a pattern of repeated Tornadoes which slice through miles of land and cause severe damage to crops, lives and infrastructure. The American mid-West, home to a long, never-ending stretch of a prairie, is one such area where the Tornadoes are most frequent and devastate large swathes. Its origin is in a very local low pressure on the surface which builds in intensity as it travels on land since nothing is in its way to disrupt its formation. With no developed structures, buildings as in cities — population centres are sparse and spread out — and not a tree or a hill in between for miles at end the phenomenon only picks up more speed, laterally and circularly within it, reaching hundreds of miles per hour with the consequence of widespread destruction in its path. It finally fizzles out when it is spent with ground friction or against physical installations which will act to break up its structure. Stopping or disrupting the cycle of formation of such weather patterns is the first intervention which human genius can and should make to avoid large scale devastation.

Forests over large areas with their own ecological impact disrupt weather patterns in their formation and leave their own neutralising effect when a phenomenon moves to gain momentum and intensity. Heat lows that are common in hotter regions can be tempered by such green developments. Pakistan has the highest deforestation rate in the world. Since 1947 forest cover has reduced from 33 per cent to just 5 per cent and continues to reduce at the rate of 1-2 per cent every year with the increase in population. Without a planned mitigation with a well-anticipated replacement strategy denudation can only spell bigger disasters including the loss of topsoil which is blown away. In comparison India retains a forest cover over 22 per cent of its land.

So while the Monsoon pattern over India this year was exactly the same, rather sharper because it must travel across India to make it to Pakistan, the augmentation factors were far less in India than they were in Pakistan. This will always remain true whenever extreme weather patterns take shape since mitigation that India inherently and so consciously has kept in place will save it against the severity of extreme climate and its destructive effect. Pakistan in comparison has only paid abysmal attention and lacks the mechanisms for mitigation against increasing phenomenon of extreme weather. It may still be time to make amends. Forthwith, we must plant trees in billions over large dedicated swathes to save our future generations from the plight of extremes in climate change if we indeed hope to survive as a civilisation.

Onto another mitigation and control strategy. The entire South Asian region is home to two of the world’s largest river systems and the largest collection of glaciers outside of the polar regions. These provide one of the biggest stocks of fresh-water supply to feed the billions that live on both sides of the Himalayas and the Karakorams, two of the world’s longest and highest mountain ranges. The Indus and the Brahmaputra, both originating in the Himalayas and traversing through Tibet, India and Pakistan, and Tibet, China, India and Bangladesh respectively get their supply from those glaciers. When the temperatures are hotter the glaciers melt faster and become the source of added water in the rivers. Compounded by seasonal rains, especially when they are heavy because of climatic change and extreme weather the deluge becomes impossible to manage. It spills beyond the capacity of most waterways and become the floods which destroy habitation, flora and fauna. Deprivation, poverty and inaccessibility to means to survive become rampant and disease takes over. Biblical accounts mention of entire civilisations being washed away by monstrous floods.

Brahmaputra has series of large dams built on it by China, India and Bangladesh. India has built numerous small and big dams on the Indus and Indus tributaries, Chenab and Jhelum even though it flows in a much longer trajectory in Pakistan. We have sadly been sitting by idly making noise which was mostly misplaced and rhetorical. As a consequence Pakistan’s live storage capacity which was 16.26 million acre feet is now reduced to around 13 MAF only which caters to only 30 days of water supply for the entire nation. India has a carryover capacity for 170 days in comparison and Egypt 700 days. What was a 5000 cubic meter per capita water availability in 1947 is now below 900 thrusting us into water scarce nations; a nightmare for an agriculture-based economy. We can store only 10 per cent of the water that comes our way in the rivers. The rest is lost to the sea or wasted away in frivolous consumption.

Dams store water and provide electricity. These also control, manage and channelise water in the courses that Pakistan was lucky to inherit from the British. The largest canal-based irrigation system in Punjab and the rest of the country is live storage which remains unused through efficient utilisation by channelising excess water as was available this year. More dams and more canals would double this capacity but has remained unattended in policy prioritisation for their long gestation periods. Politicians instead prefer areas sourcing instant political return. India in comparison was saved the wrath because of better conception and understanding of the phenomena and its levers of control and management.

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