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CHILD RIGHTS WEEK

Let Them be Ensured of Their Rights

by Prof. Roushan Ara Hoque
-w—tOLLOWING the Convention 1-4 on the Rights of Children A (CRC) formulated by the UN General Assembly on 20th November. 1989, the week from 29th September is being observed every year as the Child Rights Week, in the World Summit for Children held in New York in 1990. 22 nations including Bangladesh made a Declaration of Goals for Children's Survival. Protection and Development, and called all nations to prepare their own Plan for Action to formulate programmes. Bangladesh has ratified the Convention on 2nd September, 1990 and since then is observing this Week.
According to the (CRC) all individuals below 18 are to be considered as children. The Convention has 54 Articles. 41 of which are about their basic rights of —
* birth registration having name, identity and nationality,
* survival, protection and all round development.
• non-discrimination of religion, sex and nationality.
• not to be sold, trafficked or sexually abused.
* having family assistance for proper upbringing and intellectual development,
• having legal protection against all criminal activities.
In view of the above, the over-all condition of children in Bangladesh is alarmingly critical. According to the census of 1990. the total number of children aged up to 15 years is 45.15 per cent of the total
population. Half of them are living in sub-human standard. Out of 1000 children 125 die every year due mainly for want of care. About 8 lac 70 thousand under-5 children die due to preventible diseases. About half of the children are deprived of their basic rights to health, nutrition and education. Fortytwo per cent of children do not take admission to any school and 65 per cent of those taking admission drop out before completing their primary education.
In the employment sector the condition of 5-14 age-group child-labour is precarious. The census report of Research Reference Cell published on 9th June 1997 shows that childlabour constitute about 12 per cent of the total labour .force in Bangladesh. In total about 62 lac 98 thousand child labourers work In different sectors, such as. in agriculture, fishery, domestic homes, family business, poultry, leather processing, bidi-making. welding and lathe workshop, construction sites and in tea gardens. Girls work as domestic help and now also five lac girls work In garments industries in city areas where also many male children work as hawkers, porters, sales boys and tea boys etc. In all sectors they tall easy prey to all types of abuses, such as : they are
• deprived of standard wage.
• compelled to work for longer ours, without any ovcr-
time pay,
• to work and live in unhealthy condition.
• constantly threatened to be dismissed.
Girl labourers are sometimes sexually abused by their employers. Young girls are sometimes employed as sex workers and boys are trafficked to Middle-East to be employed as camel-Jockeys. This is the general picture of children coming from poor families. Their condition must be improved. By granting them their basic rights as formulated by the CRC they must be given opportunity to grow up as useful human resources.
To implement the CRC a National Policy on Children was formulated in 1995 with aims :
• to reduce the death rate of below 5 children to one third.
• to reduce death-rate due to malnutrition to one-half
• to bring 84 per cent of total children under immunization programme.
r to increase their rate of school admission to 68.7 per cent, and
• to reduce drop-out rate to 20 per cent.
For all-round development of children one Shishu Academy has been established at Dhaka. One Shishu Adhikar Forum has been formed consisting of 60 children's organisations. Both the Academy and the Forum organise literary, art and cultural
competitions and functions throughout the whole year. But the large number of street-children are not at all ben^ted by these programmes. They are to work for their own subsistence and also for their family. The CRC and the ILO conditions are impossible to be granted to them due to extreme poverty of their parents. The government of the developing countries also cannot afford to fulfil all of them due to shortage of funds. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) reached between the US importers and the BGMEA is a good step in eliminating child-labour below 14 and the placement of the discharged children under special schools with a stipend of Tk 300/- p.m. as a compensation for loss of their former Jobs. Some NGOs are providing them with both monetary help and yscial education. This system giving subsidy should gradually be stopped and awareness should be created among the parents that they should bear the responsibility of their own children till they attain maturity.
Since children are the future architects of the nation It is the responsibility of the state as well to guarantee them their basic rights of survival, growth and all round development. In this Child Rights Week 1997 let all of our deprived young ones by assured of their basic rights, as formulated by the CRC in 1989, to be ensured by the next Child Rights Week 1998.