Missing Children By Aziz Sanghur

Missing Children is a short documentary, produced, directed and written by Aziz Sanghur. Mr. Sanghur is a documentary film-maker. The documentary shows that approximately 3090 children were reported missing to about 100 police stations in 18 towns of Karachi city during past one year, from January-to-December 2015. On average, about two-and-half cases had been reported to each police station every month over the course of past year. These include both boys and girls. Out of the total missing 80 % (2472) were boys and 20 % (618) were girls. Out of these a large portion 78% of the children belonged to the age group of 12 and 18, while remaining 22% associated to the age group below 12 years. About 34% of missing children were studying in both formal schools and Madrassas, 30% were only the students of Madrassas while remaining 26% children were the drop out of a school or Madrassa."
The biggest reason behind this form of missing children is the lack of awareness of parents as to how to deal with young and in particular disabled children. There is often either the deliberate shunning of a mentally disabled child, or as is sometimes the case due to a lack of resources, a full time career can not be appointed to look after the child and to make sure that he or she does not get themselves into trouble.
A child may also be lost due to the size of the family. This happens when the parents can not keep a track of the whereabouts of all their children all of the time. Therefore, if the child wanders out of the house unattended, it is not unlikely that it takes some time before the family realizes that the child is missing in which time almost anything could have happened to the child.

Another factor is that if there is a separation, or if the mother is a widow, then due to the lack of a male presence in the household, the child may not be informed of the different types of threats and danger that he will have to face in the world. While the mother may in some cases be very worldly wise, due to cultural reasons in our society this is not as common as that same awareness being present amongst men.
The main reason behind children running away from home is the economic pressures faced by the family. If a low income family has seven or eight children, then it becomes very difficult to provide for the children who have their own ambitions and to try and fulfill these ambitions, run away from home either from one city to another or from a rural village to a city. Therefore, the age group of these children is usually between fourteen and eighteen years of age. Children also runaway from home to escape from the grasp of abusive parents who may be drug addicts or alcoholics or simply extremely temperamental and choose to take out their frustrations on their spouses and children.
Unfortunately in our society, due to various factors such as the inefficiencies present in our law enforcement system kidnapping is rife.
One of the reasons behind the kidnapping of children is for ransom. In a society where there is great inequality, kidnapping is seen by some as a justifiable way of the reallocation of resources from the well to do to the poor. However, this is not entirely accurate as although this may be used as pretence the organizers of kidnappings are often from very well to do families who do it for fun, or the kidnappers through organized crime have amassed large fortunes. The uses of such children are many. Younger children are often abducted and transported to the United Arab Emirates to be used as camel jockeys in the camel races. Apart from this, there are many children who are kidnapped for use by the beggary mafia. Many of the hideously disfigured children seen roaming the streets of the cities of Pakistan and Karachi especially, are mostly raising money not for themselves but for their masters in what is effectively a form of slavery. Due to the strength and resources of those in this mafia, it has become very difficult for the law enforcement agencies to take action against them.