Pakistan

CLAAS is the Centre for Legal Assistance and Settlement, an organisation which provides sanctuary for girls and young women who have escaped from forced marriages.

Every year in Pakistan thousands of teenage girls are abducted and forced into marriage. Most come from the poorest of families and many are Christians, as Pakistani Christians are amongst the poorest and are restricted to the most menial types of work. With marriage comes a forced conversion to Islam. Some do, however, manage to escape and are sheltered at “Apna Ghar” (literally “my home”) which offers them sanctuary in the heart of Lahore. The girls are often in great danger and are likely to be killed if discovered.

In addition to supporting the shelter, the Epiphany Trust has provided specialist counselling training for the “Apna Ghar” staff.

CLAAS is also committed to fighting cases where Christians are persecuted and imprisoned on the grounds of their faith, particularly those accused under blasphemy law.

One of the most heartbreaking programmes the Epiphany Trust has been involved in concerns the children of the Lahore brickyards. Children as young as 4 make bricks, alongside their parents and grandparents, to pay off family debts which in many cases go back decades. The debt may have been incurred for a joyful occasion such as a wedding, but repayment becomes a painful generational burden. Constant back-breaking work is often just enough to keep up with interest payments.

Whole families camp around the kilns in makeshift shelters and miserable, unhygienic conditions, working outdoors in temperatures as high as 40º. The children of the brickyard families are unable to attend school because of their enforced labour, and their resulting lack of education further embeds them in poverty.

Through our partners in Lahore, the Epiphany Trust has provided one-day-a-week schooling for fifty children.

The lawyers of CLAAS (see Apna Ghar) have worked hard to challenge this unethical practice and have succeeded in obtaining freedom for some children who have been released from labour and are now able to attend school full time.

This school provides education and training for children with learning disabilities and/or physical handicaps. It began with just one child and now has around 50 students, some with quite severe disabilities.

As well as teaching general life skills, there is communication and vocational training, physiotherapy, counselling, scholarships, medical referrals, and courses in creative art; based on the understanding that creativity in art can empower and promote self-determination for individuals with disabilities.

Amir Alam first attended the TSA Special School when he was 13 years old, sponsored by the Epiphany Trust. Amir has no arms but has become extremely adept in using his feet, even managing to wield a cricket bat by gripping it between his toes! Amir, still partly in education, is also employed by the school, photocopying and printing some of their materials. Because of his disability and his eye-catching compensational skills Amir is very vulnerable to kidnap and entrapment by the beggar gangs, and so the school has agreed to employ him permanently.