Section III — The LawThe Tahafuz Record
The Law
Five statutes.
One unnamed crime.
Pakistan does not lack laws on children. It lacks a statute that treats child domestic servitude as itself the crime. Below, in plain language: what each law covers, what it excludes, and the gap it leaves behind.
Filed from Lahore · Punjab · Ongoing
- Scope
- Federal (post-18th Amendment, largely superseded by provincial legislation).
- What it covers
- Prohibits the employment of children under 14 in factories, mines, and certain hazardous occupations listed in the Schedule.
- What it excludes
- Explicitly excludes work performed 'in a family enterprise' and any work in a private residence. Domestic work in a household is not on the hazardous occupations list.
- The gap, in plain language
- A ten-year-old cleaning a workshop is a child labourer under this Act. A ten-year-old cleaning the workshop owner's home, doing exactly the same work, is invisible to it.
- Read the law · working papers
- Full text of the Act (PDF)
statute · Asian Development Bank / Law & Policy Reform
- Employment of Children Act, 1991 — Pakistan Code
statute · Ministry of Law and Justice
- ILO compendium: hazardous child labour lists — Pakistan (PDF)
report · International Labour Organization
- Full text of the Act (PDF)