When will there be justice for Pakistan’s victims of child abuse?

Three years after the murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari shook Pakistan, little has changed for victims.

On January 9, 2018, the body of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari was discovered on a rubbish dump in her home town of Kasur, Pakistan. She was not the first young girl from the city to have disappeared and protests erupted in Kasur about police inaction over a string of violent sexual attacks against small children in the city. This anger spread beyond Kasur as riots broke out across Pakistan. Three weeks after Zainab was raped and murdered, her killer, Imran Ali, was arrested with the help of security camera footage – which was obtained not by police, but by Zainab’s relatives. He was found guilty of similar crimes against six more girls. The families of those other children had sought help from the police but had been dismissed or come under suspicion themselves, leaving the killer free to continue offending. He was executed later that year, but simmering rage about the mishandling of the case remains.