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Go to any city in Pakistan, and you’ll find children on the street. Perhaps they’ll be racing up to your car to beg for money, or cleaning your windshield without permission, or running errands for your local khokha. They could be tasked with the undue burden of raising money for their families, or they could have been abandoned, or they could have lost their parents to some sort of accident or attack, but rest assured nobody is going to ask. The sight of poor children fending for themselves is so normalized that it doesn’t even warrant a second glance, so there’s never really a chance for people to stop and think to themselves: “shouldn’t this kid be looked after?”

Perhaps it is human nature for people to avert their gaze, to look the other way when they feel helpless, but that won’t change the horrifying fact that there are at least 4.2 million orphans in the country, and not nearly enough infrastructure in place to take care of them. Private orphanages such as the Edhi foundation and SOS are overburdened, and only end up taking care of a small portion of needy children. In 2017, it was reported that there were only 35 government-run shelter homes in Pakistan, each with a capacity of 100. The problem is clear, and growing. One obvious solution would be to put a large chunk of these children up for adoption. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, that’s not as easy as it sounds.

There are many hurdles in standardizing and regulating adoption; national circumstances, and cultural/social taboos are two of the most obvious. To begin, let’s tackle the latter.

Log Kya Kahenge: Societal Restrictions

Even among the most educated of the country, there is a persistent thread of unthinkability about adoption — it is simply not done unless absolutely necessary, like as a last-ditch option for infertile couples. There’s an inherent judgment circling the very concept of it. Women who have been adopted have spoken of being denied rishtas, and adoptive parents talk of being disrespected and asked intrusive questions. This hostile attitude is something that might stem from an internalization of a certain interpretation of legal Islamic principles.

In Islam, although the raising of orphans and needy children is heavily recommended, the orphaned child cannot be treated exactly like biological family. It is more accurate to call it a fostering situation, rather than full blown adoption. This means, among other things, that they do not inherit from their adoptive family, do not take on the family name, and their adoptive family is not mahram to them. One can see how this might complicate things in regards to rules of modesty, which are taken very seriously in Pakistan, and other such matters. But culture works in intricate ways and has a lot of facets, so to ascribe all the blame of the taboo to religion would be wrong and one-dimensional. It’s simply the most evident connection to draw. Whatever the reasons, adoption is an unusually difficult topic to broach, so it doesn’t take up much space in our national discourse. It is definitely not discussed with the kind of candor that’s become commonplace in other countries.

In a nation that prides itself for its strong family bonds, a nation in which the extensive acceptance of joint families and of polygamy often leads to de-facto informal adoption and large sprawling networks of kinship that aren’t always based in blood, one might think that the community-at-large would be glad to take helpless children in. But unfortunately, these children remain unwanted and ostracized, often dehumanized and used for labor and sex, apparently not a part of the societal ‘unity’ that nationalists and their ilk constantly profess. The reasons for this apathy are many, such as the aforementioned social taboo, but considering the festering inequality in Pakistan it probably has a lot to do with classism and pedigree as well. Any way you take it, even if there was suddenly a change of heart in the sentiments of average Pakistanis, there would still be the issue of the actual adoption process.

The Faults in Our Adoption System

Adopting a child is not an easy procedure anywhere. It is a process known and often depicted for its tediousness – waitlists, appointments, money, interviews, and more money. This is to be expected, of course, when the life of a child is on the line. But in Pakistan, it’s not simply a tedious bureaucratic process — it is almost impossible. Technically, Pakistan doesn’t even recognize adoption. There is no such thing as an ‘adoption’ process. To take in a child, you must apply for guardianship in a local family court. Guardians are not the same as parents, but this is the only legal route one can take to establish a relationship with the child in the eyes of the State. Unfortunately, since they have to legally announce that the child isn’t their own, this process causes problems for the adoptive parents when it comes to creating necessary legal forms for their adopted child, such as a birth certificate or the B form. Also see china’s one child policy. Due to these unfair legal boundaries, most people who pursue adoption in Pakistan are forced to live a lie, and claim that the child was born at home so that they can get the necessary forms the child needs to live a normal life.

Keep in mind that the decision to adopt a child is a deliberate, carefully made one. The people who choose to adopt these children will be dedicating time, money, and ultimately their lives to them. Outliers aside, these people know what they’re doing. Making a conscious decision to raise a child as your own should not come with a debasement of your ethics. Ethical and safe adoption is possible even in financially-burdened countries, and there are examples of this all around the world.

Presently, the requirements of ‘adoption’ are discriminatory and exclusive. To take guardianship of a child in Pakistan, you must be a Muslim — unless they have certification that the child is a non-Muslim, which is rare. (When the religion of the child is unknown, the default assumption is that they’re Muslim.) You must be in a couple, married for at least three years, and at least one of the prospective parents must be of Pakistani origin (which is why a NICOP or CNIC is mandatory). If the adoptive parents are living abroad, then at least one of them should be a citizen of the country they’re living in. It is also widely understood that single people will most probably not be allowed to adopt. Clearly, the government has a very specific and limited idea of who should be able to adopt. They’re more concerned about things other than character, and so many people with good hearts and good intentions are turned away due to external qualifiers. Single women, for example, have noted the outright contempt with which orphanages deal with them.

Pakistan has been addressing the plethora of issues with adoption at a glacial pace, which is to say barely at all. We aren’t even a part of the Hague Convention, an international convention which protects minors and their rights in the case of intercountry adoption. It’s noticeable that our lawmakers are occupied with other things.

After years, the Pakistani Senate did unanimously pass the “Un-attended Orphans Act” in 2016, which aims to rehabilitate and look after the welfare of orphans and abandoned children. Forcing or coercing an orphaned child to beg or prostitute themselves, for example, has been outlawed under this act. After patting themselves on the back and making a show of designating 15th Ramadan as the “Day of Orphans and Abandoned Children” annually, the Senators quietly forgot the matter once again, and it was predictably left to the back-burner. Attempts at systemization and putting all these children into the national database have been started, although the attitude toward implementation can still be described as lukewarm at best. Empty gestures clearly aren’t enough.

What Can We Do? Things To Ponder

One of the first things that needs to be done to confront this gaping hole in the system is a regulated, streamlined, and inclusive process for domestic adoptions. Acknowledging the lack of societal acceptance at the current moment, if our own community refuses to adopt these children, then we should at least be able to facilitate their adoption by people from other countries (including non-Muslim countries). Though it’s not a quick-fix by any means, at least there would be an active attempt to curb some part of the massive child maltreatment going on in the country.

Right now matters look bleak, with the few organizations and NGO’s who deal with adoption overcharged, and the constant fear that any shady dealings might lead to the human trafficking of children with nobody waiting at home for them. The best option for the conscientious citizen is to begin pressuring their local representatives to take their wards seriously. In a country with so much death and trauma, one would expect that the state would want to encourage adoption as much as possible. Children, women, the elderly, the poor, and the weak are those that the government should be rushing to protect first. But of course, it simply doesn’t seem to be working out that way.

If the prospect of happy children and a sense of altruistic humanitarianism isn’t enough to convince you, there is also the matter of making Pakistan a safer place, with less crime and less poverty. It’s long been known that neglect and abuse during childhood are directly linked with a bundle of social issues, such as a propensity toward crime in adulthood. Imagine the social rewards that Pakistan could reap if we took each and every abused, neglected, and disenfranchised child and gave them the opportunity to be raised in a loving family. We all know that long-term policy changes aren’t Pakistani politicians’ favorite thing, but with enough pressure from the people they would have no choice but to care about all the kids that fall under their umbrella of responsibility as lawmakers. We must begin to try, if nothing else. Just think of the children.