Abandoned in Pakistan
I had the honour of talking to the brilliant founder and director of Imkaan, Tahera Hasan. Imkaan is a non-profit organisation based in Pakistan, and is founded on the tenet that each and every child not only has the right to live, but to thrive. Hasan’s extensive work includes structuring Imkaan’s community outreach programs, Hasan currently runs a number of projects under the Imkaan umbrella, including:
Khel - a recreational and learning centre
Sehat Ghar - Mother and Child Healthcare Centre
Maternity Home
Pasban e Mahaul - a solid waste management program
Legal Aid Centre for stateless individuals
In this interview, Hasan discusses with me the myriad of issues surrounding the adoption process in Pakistan, reasons for child abandonment and the pressing issue of statelessness within Pakistan’s vulnerable and disenfranchised communities. Imkaan’s boundless work to rectify these issues through its projects has left an indelible mark on the lives of the communities, individuals, and children they have helped and supported over the last 9 years.
Why was Imkaan established?
Tahera: Imkaan was initially established for the process of adoption. I had been through personal experiences with adoption where I had some very good experiences and some very bad experiences. I felt that there was a lack of formal structure, awareness and knowledge for those who were going through the adoption journey in Pakistan.
What do you mean by lack of formal structure?
Tahera: We [Pakistan] aren’t signatories to the Hague Adoption Convention and consequently lack formal structures and laws in place for adoption. This leaves two options: the informal process where it’s not documented or the international adoption process whereby you go through the guardianship courts & aim to be appointed a guardian of the child.
What issues arise due to the lack of formal structure in the process of adoption in Pakistan?
Tahera: What we’ve seen over time and from my own personal experience is that we don’t have structures for medical testing in place for the children. For example, people are placed with children who are gravely ill who they could lose in two weeks or are often confronted with challenges they aren’t ready for such as children with special needs. This is obviously an issue since some parents may not have the resources to cope with that.
What structures are put in place to aid this process?
Tahera: Apart from dealing with adoption in a holistic way we also aim to create structures within the organisation which would be at par with what the international convention is and what the requirements are even though we are not signatories to the Hague Convention. One example of this is our detailed vetting process. If you look at our prospective parent intake form we ask couples how or if they will talk to their children about adoption e.g. questions along the lines of whether they are going to tell them or will they talk about it etc. These sort of issues don’t really come up or are discussed as far as the adoption process in Pakistan is concerned. We want to provide that support system to families in the course of the adoption journey, both pre and post-placement.
I read your interview with LSE and you mentioned that there is a misconception regarding rates of female infanticide. Could you unpack this for me?
Tahera: There is a huge misconception that boys are simply not abandoned but that is wrong. There are also misconceptions about poverty being the direct link to child abandonment but that only makes up a certain percentage of cases. In 2010 we did research in Machar Colony on child abandonment and that myth was busted because it revealed that being in poverty doesn’t always equal giving up your children as we came across several families with 8 or 10 kids. Cases of abandonment also occur due to illegitimacy and in cases of illegitimacy, gender does not play a role. We have a tendency to pretend that illegitimacy doesn’t exist in Pakistan but that is not true and it is in fact a huge driving factor of infanticide in Pakistan.
Do you emphasise family planning and birth control at your Community Healthcare Centre?
Tahera: Yes, we began talking about birth control at the Community Healthcare Centre but you have to keep in mind that this is a particularly sensitive issue when you’re working in a community with a certain belief system. Since we established our Maternity Home that kind of message has become far easier to send because we have more one-on-one conversations about the concept of family planning. This is something more and more people are beginning to understand.
One of the projects under the Imkaan umbrella is the Legal Aid Centre for stateless individuals. Why is this community so disenfranchised?
Tahera: We’ve been working in Machar colony which is a community of 800,000 people located in Karachi. It is important to note that 65% of the 800,000 population is Bengali speaking or Burmese. In a lot of cases this community deals with challenges surrounding citizenship and being issued national identity cards.
What about Pakistan’s citizenship laws?
Tahera: Pakistan’s citizenship laws allow birthright citizenship. This means that anyone born in Pakistan is entitled to citizenship. That is one of the biggest violations and non-implementation of law that we see as far as this community is concerned. Moreover the citizenship law actually deals with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and states that individuals who can provide documentation dating before 1971 uptil 1978 would be eligible for citizenship. We find that in the cases we come across, that is not how it pans out at all and there is a lot of discrimination on a departmental level. Not to mention the fact that the process for registration of citizenship is so cumbersome that it is impossible for them to even begin navigating it.
What work does the Legal Aid Centre do for them?
Tahera: The legal aid center was formed to deal with the issues that stateless communities face in the process of their identification and acquisition of citizenship. Our focus is to assist those people that have applied for citizenship, are in the process of applying, or are facing challenges in their process. Due to their lack of identity documents they are often discriminated against so the Legal Aid Centre aims to counter all of this. We have successfully helped 100+ individuals obtain their identity cards. We take cases to court in cases where ID cards have been blocked or they have been issued a National Alien Registration card against their will. In addition to this we do a lot of significant work around awareness and believe in empowering these individuals through the knowledge of their rights.
Empowerment through knowledge is so important. Can you run me through some of the education structures put in place in Imkaan?
Tahera: We have an informal education component so kids that come to us study basic literacy skills. We aren’t a registered school so what we try to do is educate them as per a curriculum. Those who do have identity documents and are able to be integrated into mainstream schooling systems are integrated with our help. We have children going to TCF from us and sitting for entrance exams even though they’ve never formally studied before.
What would you say your greatest achievement has been so far?
Tahera: One of the things closest to my heart is our learning and recreational center, Khel. There we impact young kids and their lives and the process of their development. For a community - especially as conservative as this one - to have an all-girls gymnastics team winning inter school competitions across Karachi is a huge deal both for them and for us. Not only are they breaking gender barriers, they are breaking barriers of their poverty and circumstances.
What has been your biggest obstacle?
Tahera: I’ve been asked on multiple occasions if there has been any resistance or backlash as a result of working in this environment but I really haven’t felt that. I feel that the only challenges we face are the ones we put for ourselves in the course of working for and with these communities. I believe the obstacles we face in our day to day work are part of the process of learning to move towards betterment. Of course in an ideal world a lot of things should have happened by now which haven’t and I could define that as a challenge but I believe it is part of the process. I believe that it will happen and that is why we do the work we do because we believe this change will happen.
That’s an incredible way to put it. Did the pandemic have an effect on Imkaan’s projects?
Tahera: One of the major things we did was start a new project during the pandemic. We actually revamped our Mother and Child Healthcare Centre and included a mental health clinic. This is something that was quite phenomenal as far as Pakistan is concerned due to the general lack of mental health awareness. We have therapists at our mental health clinic who organise group sessions. Our clinic essentially was a response to developing and catering to what was happening during the pandemic and it started fulfilling something that already existed before it began. But generally, the pandemic hasn’t affected us as our fieldwork and outreach work continued as per usual.
That’s amazing, could you tell me more about your mental health clinic?
Tahera: Our mental health clinic aims to deal with issues that the community faces and to provide support systems for people with similar problems. This community has a lack of education, a lack of access to health facilities, they can’t buy property or SIM cards etc. So there is a lot of hopelessness and frustration amongst them and the major hurdle becomes their identity citizenship documents. Drug addiction of course also comes up as a big pressing issue as far as this community was concerned.
Why is drug addiction such a pressing issue?
Tahera: Well if your youth has no access to recreation, education or proper housing, what are they left with? They inevitably indulge in antisocial activities. There is no mentoring, guidance or protection. Drug addiction generally in Pakistan is a huge issue, but in a community which faces a multitude of issues the reality is much worse. What we often see is that even those who want to go to rehab and address their issues are unable to do so. We cannot send them to state run rehabilitation centers because they don’t have the necessary citizenship documents or identity cards.
How can people abroad, namely those part of the Pakistani diaspora support Imkaan and the work you do?
Tahera: There are multiple things that can be done. First and foremost is awareness about the nature of work. The diaspora aside, Pakistanis living here lack knowledge about the issue of statelessness and the fact that we have a Bengali speaking population. It is important to remember that this was one country. They’re not refugees. Bringing these wider issues into the narrative of statelessness and making it a conversation is very very important. I’ve done talks at Harvard and Columbia, so for universities to be picking this up as something that can be talked about also brings it into the circle of Pakistanis living abroad who might- at some point or another- have an influence on how things are structured. I think that engagement is very very important and I am always available to talk to anybody about it.
Do you have any goals for Imkaan to achieve in the future?
Tahera: Our main goal for Khel is for our kids to have the identity to participate and train internationally. I think that is very important. We want to be able to give them that exposure so their families continue to support them. It is extremely important for us and for them that we reach this objective. In terms of our Legal Aid Centre, we hope to be a vehicle for change to implement laws that would grant identity for people of these communities. That would be our ideal achievement.
To keep up to date with Imkaan’s work you can follow them on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. You can also follow Tahera Hasan on Twitter.
Interview by Lina Idrees