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Save the Children expelled from Pakistan

This news post is almost 9 years old
 

Pakistan government shuts down Save the Children’s offices in the capital Islamabad

Pakistan has closed down the offices of international children’s charity Save the Children in its capital Islamabad.

There has been no official government explanation as to why but one official told a news agency the UK based charity had been monitored and was doing something “against Pakistan's interest."

Save the Children has denied any wrongdoing and said it has “serious concerns” about the move.

A spokesperson said: "We strongly object to this action and are raising our serious concerns at the highest levels.

"All our work is designed and delivered in close collaboration with the government ministries across the country, and aims to strengthen public service delivery systems in health, nutrition, education and child welfare."

In 2012, Pakistan accused the charity of having links to Dr Shakil Afridi who ran a CIA fake vaccination programme which helped track down Osama Bin Laden – again something the charity has always denied.

Foreign staff working for the charity were forced to leave the country and since then its work there, mainly health, education and food projects, has been carried out by 1,200 Pakistani staff.

 

Comments

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Syed Sharfuddin
almost 9 years ago
The Government of Pakistan should follow the normal procedure of enquiry into any allegations against a charity which it believes is operating in the country against its stated objects and the regulations governing foreign charities. This enquiry should be done by the designated regulator of foreign charities in the country and the concerned Charity should be given full opportunity to answer the queries and respond to the allegations in a reasonable time limit. The next stage in the process is determining the result of either accepting the explanation of the Charity and exonerating it, or if it is found to be contrary, deciding the penalty (the highest being a shut down) and publishing a full report of the enquiry for the civil society and media to read and know what happened. The report also acts as a lesson learnt for the other charities concerned about their future operations in the country. It does not seem that this has happened and the Government authorities have acted on the Ministry of Interior's instructions without providing sufficient public information about the charity Save the Children Pakistan's activities or the procedures followed by them in reaching their conclusions to close its office in Islamabad. This sounds similar to shutting down the office of Axact in Karachi a few weeks ago. In a court of law if a case is filed it can be thrown out for not following the correct procedure. On the other hand, since the forceful closure of the office of Save the Children in Pakistan yesterday, there is no Media Statement on the website of the Charity stating what happened and what is its next course of action. What we have instead is all the major news agencies and papers in the US and UK are talking about it while Save the Children Pakistan has gone into complete silence. Both the above are odd examples of not following good practice.
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