Mohammad Ali

Muhammad quickly recovers and reunites missing children with their families through a communities-based early warning system. He has developed a network of first-responders working in a wide variety of venues, including mosques, shops, roadside hotels, hairdressing salons, health clinics, and amongst TV cable operators and the police. He then collects, prints, and disseminates information within the critical first few hours of abduction, helping to recover children in more than 90% of all cases. Recognizing that child safety is linked to parental education and a family’s well-being, Muhammad hosts a weekly radio program on missing children and appears frequently on local television shows focusing on parenting skills and creating a safe environment for children within the home as well as outside.

Muhammad has developed a fast-acting search system to reunite missing children with their families. His organization, the Roshni Missing Children Helpline (now called Roshni Research & Development Welfare Organization), specializes in quick response and careful coordination amongst a large network of volunteers during the first critical hours of a child's disappearance. Having launched his pilot program in Layri Town, Karachi, Muhammad has built up a thriving network of more than 4,000 individuals and partner organizations, including business owners, journalists, religious leaders, and government officials in the course of several years. Upon first receiving a case, Muhammad collects, prints and disseminates information to his volunteer partners, who quickly share information amongst their own networks. With the help of his partners, he is able to distribute leaflets and air an ad on local cable TV and social media within the first several hours of a child’s disappearance. Through this system, Muhammad has successfully recovered children in a majority of the cases that have come before him.

Recognizing that child safety depends on far more than quick intervention, however, Muhammad concurrently works to educate parents and children and improve families' overall well-being. He has partnered with a local FM radio station to host a weekly radio program on missing children and makes frequent appearances on local tv channels, in which he provides lessons in parenting skills and child safety, and advice on how to maintain peace at home. He also provides training to law enforcement agencies on reporting and investigation of missing children cases, having formed close partnerships with police forces across the country.

While the precise number of missing children in Pakistan is unknown, estimates by local police suggest that in Karachi alone, at least 4,000 children went missing at some point during the last year. Most missing children's cases stem either from a lack of parenting skills, or in the case of young children, children wandering alone and losing their way home. Indeed, in Karachi, the large size of most families has meant that parents often fail to keep a proper eye on their children. In the time that it takes for a family to realize a child is missing, almost anything could have happened, making a quick response time especially important.

The recovery rate of these missing children is very low. Police for the most part fail to acknowledge this as a real problem, often considering it the parents' problem rather than theirs. Even when there is real concern, police lack the capacity to effectively deal with the problem. Despite the large number of cases, missing children constitute a veritable black hole in the law-enforcement structure of Pakistan. For example, until recently, missing children were not considered a cognizable offence, meaning that the police were not required to investigate such cases and there was no single unit assigned to the recovery of missing children in Karachi, a city of more than 20 million people.

And while a few civil society organizations offer shelters for missing or runway children, parents have no means of accessing concrete help.

Having spent several years working on missing children's cases in other organizations, Muhammad grew frustrated with the fact that each operated alone, and was thus unable to respond quickly to each case. Because a missing child can quickly move or be moved across city and regional lines, any effort to track the child demands coordination at all levels. In response, Muhammad launched the Roshni Missing Children Helpline in May 2003 (and formally established it as an organization in 2008) and immediately set about forming a network of active and reliable partners.

Upon first receiving a case, Muhammad and his volunteers at the helpline conduct a thorough interview with the family member or other known acquaintance of the child, which they use to develop and print a minimum of 1000 pamphlets. Printed on sheets of 4" x 4" or larger, the pamphlets are then distributed through the helpline's partner network and on social media within the first two hours of learning of a case. Muhammad has formed a partnership with a local TV cable operator, who likewise circulates the information about the child on its network.

Roshni focuses on mosques, recognizing their power at the center of the community. Muhammad worked with leaders in the town's mosques to announce the name and other characteristics of the missing child on the loudspeakers, training them to compile the data and announcements of missing children in registers. He also works with local prayer leaders on child protection issues, encouraging them to use their influence to improve parents' behavior.

Muhammad also launched a partnership with a local FM radio station and is now building public awareness about the problem through frequent television appearances and a weekly radio program. His presence on television, FM radio and social media has brought added attention to his work, both among area philanthropists and residents elsewhere in Pakistan, leading to a considerable increase in cases from all over the country.

Finally, after about two decades of struggle and countless innovative public awareness campaigns reaching many millions of people, missing children is known and recognized widely as a major social issue.

Muhammad has also been the driving force behind the newly promulgated missing children laws, the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Act 2020, which finally recognizes missing children as a cognizable offence and requires police to investigate the cases and recover the children.

Over the years, Muhammad has built a highly effective, community‑based early warning system that has transformed the recovery of missing children and strengthened child protection across Pakistan. By mobilizing an extensive network of first responders, he has led successful reunifications in more than 90% of cases and contributed to the recovery of over 14,000 children and support for more than 40,000 families. Recognizing that prevention is rooted in awareness and education, he has worked closely with state institutions and communities alike, conducting 73 training sessions for police forces (training over 4,400 officers), 95 sessions for more than 4,000 schoolchildren, and 112 sessions for over 3,000 parents. Through sustained mass‑media engagement—including more than 1,700 radio programs reaching an estimated 150 million listeners, over 500 television appearances reaching approximately 370 million viewers, and the wall‑chalking of public service messages on more than 289,000 walls nationwide—Muhammad has amplified critical conversations around child safety, responsible parenting, and community vigilance, creating lasting systemic change in how children are protected both inside and beyond the home.

To lower costs and further strengthen its ties to the community, Roshni relies almost wholly on local resources, and is currently run by Muhammad and a strong group of volunteers. Muhammad is currently focused on strengthening his response system throughout Karachi and the surrounding region, and hopes to provide services across the country over the next five years.

In 1991, when a young girl in a nearby town was abducted and abused, Muhammad took it upon himself to rescue her, despite his mother’s advice to stay away from such a sensitive matter. With the help of the police and a local non-governmental organization, he played an instrumental role in her successful rescue, leading to an enduring commitment to fighting women and children's abuse cases.

Later, while working in Sharjah, he attempted to highlight the plight of the region's large number of South Asian workers, who faced rampant discrimination by their Arab employers. As a result of his outspoken protests, he was fired from what had been a financially rewarding job, and in 1994 began working with two well-known NGOs in Karachi: the War Against Rape and the Madadgaar Helpline. There he was involved in the investigation of child and women's abuse cases, and worked on more than 1300 missing children's cases. Preferring to focus wholly on the issue of missing children, however, he went on to launch the Roshni Missing Children Helpline in May 2003.

Muhammad Ali has exceptional knowledge on national legislation pertaining to women's and children's rights. He has been quoted in several national and regionally acclaimed journals on issues related to women and children, and currently lives in Karachi with his wife and four children.