Editorial
Child rights protection
Practical action awaited
Five decades after the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Child by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and two decades after adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Bangladesh government last year on May Day declared it had a National Child Policy in hand. The final draft of the policy was placed on the Women and Children Affairs ministry's website on September 15 this year. According to the draft policy, the age of a child has been redefined at below 18 years and it promises to keep children out of work.
The draft policy, with its redefinition of a child's age and its pledge to rid the nation of child labour apart, the nation is still home to some 7.4 million working children. But this number is also dated because the National Bureau of Statistics gave this estimate seven years back in 2003. Meanwhile, the number must have increased on a par with the growth of the population. So, when it comes to the realities on the ground, we are still rather in the rhetorical phase and far from addressing it in earnest.
At a recent seminar on child rights held in the city, the state minister for Women and Children Affairs Dr. Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury made a frank admission that the tendency to engage children in work has rather increased in society. By admitting it, the minister has only acknowledged the gravity of the situation so far as rights of children are concerned.
By engaging in work, children are being denied firstly their basic right to education. At the workplace, what they face are yet other forms of denial, deprivation and hazards. Small wonder children so exposed to maltreatment and abuse suffer from malnutrition and various types of diseases. That in other words means, in addition to their right to education, children at work also risk losing every other right they are entitled to.
Sad to say, little is being done to take these children back to school, which is experiencing increasing number of dropouts at the primary stage of education. And if brought under closer scrutiny, it will be found that in most cases, the dropped out boys and girls have been engaged in work at home or field or at other workplaces. And in the case of girls, some may have even been married off.
In the circumstances, protection of child rights should better be taken from the level of mere rhetoric and reiteration by government leaders and advocacy bodies at seminars and symposia to the field of action to remove the curse from society.
And to reduce the rate of dropout, steps need to be taken to provide children with food and other incentives at school so that the poor guardians feel encouraged to keep sending their wards to school.
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