On a cold morning in Gilgit-Baltistan, the sound of a school bell can cross a valley faster than a child using a wheelchair. The sound travels over stone walls, narrow paths and terraced fields. The child may live only a short distance away, yet the journey to the classroom can be impossible. There may be no suitable transport, no ramp at the entrance and no accessible toilet inside. Sometimes, the strongest barrier is waiting at home: the fear of what other people will say.
Across Pakistan, disability is still misunderstood as an azaab, a punishment for a family’s sins, or the result of nazar. A child who moves, speaks or learns differently may be taken to spiritual healers before being examined by a qualified medical professional. Parents, especially mothers, can spend years blaming themselves for something they did not cause. By the time proper help is found, valuable opportunities for early support may already have been lost.
Faith itself is not the problem. Prayer can give a family courage, and medical care does not require anyone to abandon their beliefs. Prayer and physiotherapy can exist in the same home. The harm begins when religion is used to accuse parents, frighten a child or replace assessment and treatment. Disability is a health and human-rights issue, not proof of moral failure.
Consider cerebral palsy, a condition often surrounded by misinformation. It affects movement, balance and posture because of abnormal development of, or damage to, the developing brain. Some people with cerebral palsy walk independently, some use wheelchairs and others require daily assistance. Their movement or speech does not reveal how much they understand. It is also wrong to assume that every case is caused by a lack of oxygen during birth. Birth complications can contribute, but in many cases the exact cause remains unknown. There is no single cure, although physiotherapy, communication support, treatment for muscle stiffness and suitable assistive equipment can greatly improve a person’s independence and quality of life. These are established medical facts, not matters of opinion.
Pakistan has not even counted disability consistently. A figure of 0.48 per cent was widely reported after the 2017 census, creating the false impression that disability was extremely rare. The 2023 census used broader questions about difficulty in seeing, hearing, walking, communicating, remembering and self-care. It recorded approximately 7.45 million people with disabilities, equal to 3.1 per cent of the population covered by the table. When people reporting any level of functional difficulty were included, the number reached 23.17 million, or 9.6 per cent. The official figures do not prove that disability suddenly increased. They show how better questions can make previously overlooked people visible.
Gilgit-Baltistan still lacks recent, comprehensive disability data. One important regional study screened 3,194 children under the age of 15 in selected communities and identified disabilities in 7.5 per cent. This figure should not be treated as a current rate for the entire region, but the study revealed a disturbing pattern. Children faced discrimination, accessible learning materials were scarce, rehabilitation services were severely limited and many did not continue their education beyond primary school.
Healthcare access also changes sharply from one valley to another. The Gilgit-Baltistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2016–17 found that 62 per cent of recent deliveries had skilled assistance, falling to 57.8 per cent in rural areas. The district rate was 98.1 per cent in Hunza but only 34.7 per cent in Shigar. These differences matter. Northern Pakistan is not one uniform community, and its people should not be reduced to a single story of poverty or superstition.
The mountains make travel difficult, but mountains do not design public services. A mountain does not construct a school with stairs but no ramp. It does not send teachers into classrooms without inclusive-education training. It does not decide that therapy and assistive equipment should remain available mainly in large cities. These are human decisions, and they can be changed.
According to the State of Children in Pakistan 2024 report, only 23 per cent of government schools covered by the cited rural survey had ramps. Specialised staff, hearing support and accessible transport were almost absent from the government schools surveyed. Even a ramp is only the beginning. A child may also need an accessible toilet, safe transport, flexible teaching methods, communication support and protection from bullying.
For girls, disability can bring another layer of exclusion. In families where a boy is valued mainly as a future earner and a girl mainly as a future wife, a disabled girl may be considered incapable of both roles. Her education is treated as unnecessary, and decisions are made around her instead of with her. Eventually, the child is not only kept out of school; she is removed from conversations about her own future.
Gilgit-Baltistan already has a disability law. The 2019 Act recognises rights involving education, healthcare, accessibility, employment and family life. But a law cannot carry a wheelchair up a staircase. Its value must be measured by what happens in schools, hospitals, workplaces and remote villages.
Real change does not require a miracle. It begins when a health worker explains a child’s condition without blaming the parents. It continues when rehabilitation is available closer to home, when a wheelchair is fitted to the person rather than simply donated, and when a local school accepts that walking, speaking or learning in one particular way cannot be the price of admission.
A disabled child should not have to become extraordinary before being welcomed. The child is already a full person, with opinions, weaknesses, humour, anger and dreams. What needs to be corrected is not the child’s humanity, but the society that refuses to recognise it.
The hidden children of the Karakoram are not hidden by their bodies alone. They disappear when misinformation becomes stronger than medicine, when shame becomes stronger than love and when public systems are built as if they do not exist.
Those barriers were created by people. People can remove them.
