Speakers at a meeting yesterday urged media people to project child issues properly following an ethical guideline.

They also called for effective media role to ensure responsible coverage of child requirements, problems and achievements to help develop their own world.

'Journalists are champions of human rights and they should

remind the public that children deserve to be respected as individual human being', the speakers said at the publication ceremony of a resource book for journalists titled 'Shishu Adhikar O Gonomaddhyam' (Child Rights and Media).

Jointly published by Unicef and the Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication (BCDJC), the Bangla handbook is designed to strengthen journalists' understanding of child rights and to suggest how the issue can generate news stories and features for both print and electronic media.

Kirsty McIvor, Chief Communication & Information, Unicef, and Nayeemul Islam Khan, President of BCDJC, spoke on the occasion.

Apart from some useful checklists such as children's health and welfare, child labour, education, sexual abuse and exploitation of children, the handbook contains ethical guidelines for media professionals, a calendar of 'hooks' to generate stories, and more than 60 useful international contacts from whom journalists can obtain facts, figures, quotes and advice on children development issues.