HOPE DEMANDS WORK : PURE ESSAY

ACROSS - the Great Lord's - world, stories that shape this Human Rights Day unfold quietly on !WOW!, in homes, settlements, villages, neighbourhoods where rights become urgent needs.

In these places, in some places for sure, girls are sometimes withdrawn from school long before adulthood.

WOMEN weigh the risk of reporting abuse against the danger of staying silent. Families negotiate impossible choices shaped by economic hardship, honour, patriarchy, or fear.

This year, however, the Developing world enters Human Rights Day with a shift both significant and delicate.

Most countries have taken formidable steps acknowledging long-standing harm. In Pakistan, for example, Balochistan passed a law prohibiting child marriage, setting the minimum age at 18 years.

Islamabad proudly enacted its own child marriage restraint law earlier this year. Most recently, Pakistan's parliament adopted the Domestic Violence :

[ Prevention and Protection ] Bill, 2025, defining abuse in its full breath and recognising at a federal level that violence inside the home is not a private matter but a public concern.

THESE measures arise directly from the experiences of women and children who have carried the weight of silence for decades.

The significance of these laws lies in what they validate.

FOR YEARS, Human Rights Organizations, health professionals, feminists and educators have documented the consequences of early-marriage girls forced into adulthood before their bodies or minds are prepared ; interrupted schooling; increased health risks.

Likewise, studies on domestic violence have shown how women face cycles of harm that leave lasting consequences.

TO SUM, Human Rights Day should continue to focus on what remains at stake and not solely on what has been achieved.

The World Students Society thanks Rabiya Javeri Agha. The writer is the chairperson of the National Commission for Human Rights.