Rights of women and children
Photo: Photo: Amirul Rajiv
Recently a meeting was organized by Disadvantaged Adolescents Working NGOs (DAWN) Forum marking the World Child Labour Resistance Day, 2009 at Dhaka Mahanagar Natya Mancha, in this meeting Meher Afroz Chumki MP and Shirin Sharmin MP stressed on the need for establishing the rights of women and children. But how can this be accomplished in a poverty-stricken country like Bangladesh where women particularly are subjected to domestic violence and social injustice? It's not that easy to establish women's and children's rights at par with our religious and social norms and values. And a lot of money is also required to undertake women empowerment and children support projects. Meanwhile, as I gathered, the USAID has recently announced its first grant of more than $500,000 for the “One Woman Initiative (OWI)”, a public-private initiative to empower women in countries with significant Muslim population. The grants will be utilised by five grassroots organizations in Azerbaijan, Egypt, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. The OWI grants are being made to locally focused organisations with result-oriented programmes allowing women access to legal rights, political participation and economic development. I think, such types of public-private initiatives can work effectively towards empowering women plus rationalising child labour. Of course such programmes need a huge amount of money to start operation. Perhaps the USAID and other donor agencies may come forward in aid.
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