Will 2026 be a better year for our children?
As 2025 draws to a close, the answer feels deeply uncertain.
SHAH ALAM – It is a question many Malaysian parents ask quietly, often late at night, after another troubling headline flashes across their phones. It echoes in school chat groups, playground conversations and policy discussions alike.
As 2025 draws to a close, the answer feels deeply uncertain.
This was the year many parents felt a line had been crossed, when violence involving children no longer felt distant or rare, but uncomfortably close to home. Grief, anger and disbelief followed one case after another, forcing the nation to confront a painful question: how safe are our children?
The death of 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir in Sabah sparked national outrage, with investigations probing whether bullying contributed to her fall from a boarding school dormitory. The case renewed calls for stronger anti-bullying policies and safer school environments.
Soon after, the fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old student Yap Shing Xuen at a secondary school in Bandar Utama by a 14-year-old schoolmate during exam week shocked the country, shattering assumptions that school grounds are always safe spaces.
In Johor, reports of a nine-year-old allegedly injuring a younger sibling following excessive online gaming highlighted how digital pressure can spill into real-world harm when left unchecked.
Taken together, these cases paint a troubling picture of childhood increasingly shaped by emotional stress, constant online exposure and adult systems that intervene only after tragedy strikes. Social media and online gaming did not create violence, but they amplified pressure, conflict and desensitisation, often without the guardrails children need.
Yet blaming screens alone misses a harder truth. Technology did not fail our children. Adults did.
Former Malaysian Bar president Salim Bashir said Malaysia is not starting from zero when it comes to child protection. Over the years, the country has built a legal framework aimed at safeguarding children, including the Child Act 2001, the Sexual Offences Against Children Act, the Evidence of Child Witness Act, online safety legislation and recent anti-bullying measures.
On paper, these laws signal progress. In practice, protection remains uneven.
Salim stressed that safeguarding children is a shared responsibility and that parents, authorities and institutions must act proactively in an increasingly complex world.
“The law demarcates the roles of government and parents in protecting a child. Nevertheless, there are inadequacies, for example in situations involving the risk of exploitation of undocumented refugee children, and the absence of clear references to child arrest procedures and pre-trial processes in the Child Act,” he told Sinar Daily.
He said the government must continuously monitor legislative gaps and amend laws to address emerging concerns.
“Any long-term protection of children in the criminal justice system must be balanced between child victims and children accused of crimes, without compromising fair trials and the rule of law,” he added.
Salim also highlighted the complex relationship between technology use and children’s mental health, calling for age-appropriate policies to address cyberbullying, online self-harm and excessive screen time. He proposed a legislated parenting kit for young couples and first-time parents, implemented through welfare authorities, to reduce stress and prevent abuse.
Meanwhile, child activist Datuk Dr Hartini Zainudin believes the deeper issue lies not only in gaps in law, but in how protection is applied.
“Children in Malaysia today are navigating unsafe physical environments, digitally amplified harm, mental and emotional strain without adequate support systems and unequal protection based on citizenship, documentation, gender, and social background,” she said.
Hartini said that when abuse or violence occurs, responses are often reactive, fragmented and conditional.
“Social media and online gaming have expanded children’s exposure to harm, not because technology is evil but because adult safeguards have not kept pace,” she said.
Children now have round-the-clock access to predators, are exposed to sexualised and violent content early, and face public humiliation at scale, yet are often blamed for being online rather than protected within those spaces.
“Parents are expected to supervise without tools or training. Schools often lack trusted reporting channels, and children fear shame or retaliation. Authorities intervene after harm becomes public, not through early prevention,” she added.
While acknowledging stronger legal frameworks, she said the real problem is selective protection.
“Protection is clearer when the child is Malaysian, weaker when the child is refugee or stateless, moralised when the child is a girl and conditional when the child does not fit a ‘perfect victim’ narrative.”
She cited the Kelantan police ruling on statutory rape earlier this year as alarming.
“When sexual harm involving minors is framed through ‘consent’ or mutuality, responsibility shifts onto the child, protection thresholds rise, and adult accountability becomes blurred.”
Legally and developmentally, children cannot be treated as fully autonomous in sexual contexts, she added, warning that such framing exposes them to further harm.
Hartini said meaningful reform requires redefining child protection inclusively, ending moral policing, strengthening institutional accountability, and changing the public narrative.
“I'm so tired of sounding like a broken record. Every year we say the same thing. We must stop asking, ‘Why did the child do this?’ and start asking, ‘What failed around this child and who is responsible for fixing it?’”
As Malaysia looks toward 2026, the question remains unresolved—not because solutions are unknown, but because consistent, unconditional protection has yet to become a national reality.
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