Child domestic labor is a widespread and growing global phenomenon that traps as many as ten million children or more - mostly girls - in hidden forms of exploitation, often involving abuse, health risks and violence.

Children in domestic labor are usually "invisible" in their communities, toiling for long hours with little or no pay, frequently abused, and regularly deprived of the chance to play or go to school.

While acknowledging the difficulty of providing precise figures for the number of Rapid Assessment of Child Domestic Workers, a rapid assessment was conducted by SPARC with the following broad objectives:

1. To assess the situation of the CDWs till the age of 18, in two vicinities (one slum and one posh area) of each city of Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta.
2. To Identify CDWs as project beneficiaries in five cities and assess their situation.

The assessment of the CDWs included:
• Family backgrounds
• Socio-economic backgrounds
• Work conditions
• Living conditions
• Recreational and playtime as an important component of child hood development

The rapid assessment showed that child domestic workers in many ways were more exploited and abused than several other categories of child laborers. They were confined within their workplaces, while their employers determined their behaviour. They had no fixed timings of work and no specific tasks assigned to them: work chores ranged from cooking, cleaning, laundering, gardening, grocery, shopping and baby-sitting.

The findings indicated that this phenomenon was still prevalent as a source of cheap domestic work in the main urban areas of Pakistan. Female child workers were much higher in numbers as compared to males, probably due to socio-cultural reasons that compelled parents to perceive domestic work as more secure for their daughters. However, there were distinct provincial variations in the prevalence of female child domestic workers. In Peshawar and Quetta, the proportion of girls was lower than in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad/Rawalpindi. The NWFP and balochistan were relatively conservative regions and that did not encourage female mobility and employment.

The assessment also revealed that a significant percentage of children were between the ages of four and ten years, followed by a high percentage of 11 and 14 years olds. In Peshawar, 40 % of respondents were between four and 10 years.

Most children worked part time and commuted daily to their places of work, but the pattern varied among different cities. In Peshawar and Lahore, more children came from other areas and therefore resided at the employers’ homes, while in the remaining three cities children had families within the cities and preferred to commute daily. But the data indicated that many children employed full time stayed at the employer’s home even if their families lived within the same city.

Physical and emotional abuse also emerged from the assessment data. Three percent of the interviewed female child domestic workers employed full time reported physical abuse ranging from slaps, punches, hair pulling to violent thrashing. Verbal abuse was reported by more than half of the children. Such humiliation can scar a child for life and affect her personality and world view.

Education, balanced food, and recreation are the basic rights that the majority of the child domestic workers in the assessment were denied: 63 % had received no education (of which 75 % were girls) while 28 % had attained only primary level schooling. None of the children interviewed were currently attending school. Only 25 % of the children interviewed, and only 21 % of the girls, had any friends in the neighbourhood, reflecting the limited socialization opportunities for the child domestic workers. Socialization is another aspect of childhood needed for the development of a balanced personality.

A higher level of exploitation was evident among the girls as compared with the boys. Girls were paid less, had to perform more duties and were physically vulnerable than their male counterparts.

It was evident from the rapid assessment that there is a dire need to create awareness among the employers and parents of child domestic workers about the implications of the child labor. Many employers refused to permit their child worker to be interviewed and were non-cooperative with the research team. This suggests that social mobilization, advocacy and political commitment from the top level are required. Regulations and standards are extremely important in this respect and perhaps the first step to set the standards to be attained, but it is equally important to change the attitudes and practices of employers – households – with regard to employing children.