The Missing Shield

The death of five-year-old Ayat Noor in Haripur should disturb Pakistan far beyond the immediate horror of the crime. A child disappeared from near her home, remained missing for days and was eventually found dead. The post-mortem examination indicated sexual assault and fatal blood loss. The subsequent use of CCTV footage, geofencing and other investigative measures helped police identify suspects, but the case raises a question more important than the eventual arrest of those accused: why does a missing child not automatically trigger the fastest and most comprehensive response available to the state?

Rawalpindi’s 21 MGD water shortfall puts dam projects in focus

Ayat’s tragedy cannot be dismissed as an isolated act of brutality. During the first six months of 2026, Sahil documented 3,172 reported cases of gender-based violence, including 644 murders, 462 abductions, 280 rapes and 132 honour killings. The figures are particularly unsettling because violence is not confined to unknown streets or distant places: more than half of the reported incidents occurred in the victims’ own homes, while acquaintances and husbands constituted a significant proportion of identified perpetrators.

The lesson is uncomfortable but clear: safety cannot be secured simply by asking families to exercise greater vigilance or women to restrict their movement. No parent can supervise a child every minute, and no society can make women safe by confining them. Protection is ultimately a public responsibility.

Pakistan has already taken important legislative steps. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2021 provides for specialised procedures and Anti-Rape Crisis Cells intended to bring medical, forensic, legal and psychological assistance together under one roof. (Ministry of Law and Justice) Such institutional innovation deserves recognition: the crisis-cell model offers survivors a coordinated route to treatment and justice instead of forcing them to navigate several disconnected departments. (UN Women)

The difficulty lies in turning these provisions into a dependable national system. A law on paper cannot protect a child who disappears at dusk; an arrest cannot undo a failed investigation; and a severe sentence cannot compensate for evidence that was lost because the first few hours were wasted.

HSA promotes early detection at breast cancer awareness session

The priority must therefore shift from reaction to prevention and from episodic outrage to institutional preparedness. Every report of a missing child should receive immediate risk assessment, rapid investigation, effective use of technology and close supervision by senior officers. Police investigators, medico-legal officers and prosecutors require specialised training, while forensic facilities must be capable of producing reliable evidence without avoidable delay.

Equally important is accountability within the institutions themselves. The recent alleged sexual assault of a woman inside a Lahore police station, followed by the suspension of the station’s entire staff, showed the extraordinary consequences when an institution created for protection becomes a source of vulnerability. (The Guardian)

IHRA trains assessors for healthcare facility licensing

The state must also resist the temptation to explain every grave offence through the convenient label of mental instability. Where mental illness is genuinely involved, professional assessment and lawful protective measures are required; where it is not, such explanations merely obscure responsibility.

Nor should public debate be reduced to demands for harsher punishment. Deterrence depends not only upon the severity of a sentence but upon the credible prospect that an offender will be identified, prosecuted and held accountable.

ICT police continue interviews for phase-I recruitment

Pakistan’s real challenge, therefore, is not a shortage of laws but a shortage of certainty: certainty that a missing child will be searched for immediately, that evidence will be preserved, that survivors will be treated with dignity, that investigators will be answerable for their performance, and that prosecutions will not disappear into procedural delay.

Ayat Noor’s life cannot be restored. But her death can still compel a more serious national response — one in which protecting children and women is treated not as a matter of sympathy after tragedy, but as a fundamental obligation of the state.

NIPCO House, 4 – Shaharah e Fatima Jinnah,

Tel: +92 42 36367580    |     Fax : +92 42 36367005