GIVING children a voice is a foundation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. In Bangladesh, complex socio-economic conditions force many children to lead a very inhumane life. Rapid urbanization in an extremely poor agro-based country has continued to increase the number of homeless and slum-based children in the cities without an adequate family and financial support system. These children are easy victims of highly exploitative forms of child labour and suppression of their basic rights. Their social isolation also excludes them from community-based health services and any kind of recreational opportunities.
In this backdrop, the initiative of Children's Express (Shishu Prokash) of Mass Line Media Centre (MMC) has been working to enable young people from different local levels to raise their voices and make report of various incidents of child rights violation with the support of UNICEF.
The main objective of the Children's express is to address child and adolescent rights issues to the people through disseminating information in media, both the national and local level. The vision was to strengthening children's participation in the media as well as to enhance both the quality and quantity of child development and rights based news in Bangladesh. It is the first ever children news agency in Asia.
During the course of time, Shishu Prokash took initiatives for a set of activities to address the child and adolescent rights issues to the public through media. Shishu Prokash appointed 64 'Team Leader' at district levels, who are also being
involved with different media of both national and local level. The team leaders were trained up to develop their skills on child-rights based journalism, which helped them to enhance their quality to address child rights issues more qualitatively and in-depth from their own community.
ways, such as;
l Preparing in-depth reports on child-rights issues;
l From being an active provider of news, it consciously took up a general advocacy role for child rights issues;
l Identifying urgently needed burning issues and pursue these to the
Through this programme, Shishu Prokash developed 640 children journalists in 64 districts (10 from each district) of the country. The formation of child journalists provided extra emphasis on strengthening children's participation in the media by providing children with opportunities to speak for themselves, about their hopes and fears, their achievements, and inform the people that children deserve to be respected as individual human beings. Therefore, the issues got more authenticity and objectivity.
In general, Shishu Prokash has played an effective role in number of
very and through sustained and vigorous follow-up news and information;
l Provide necessary suggestions and advocacy to the authority (both the government officials and public representatives), and the planners to improve child rights situation of the country;
l Create awareness among mass people through disseminating information regarding the issues;
Therefore, the main objective is developed to strengthen the news agency with a vision to highlight the child rights issues through advocacy journalism, from which it would be
possible to raise awareness among mass people, concerned authorities, and development organizations as well. These activities would also help to enhance children's participation in media providing children with opportunities to speak for themselves.
Through the activity the local journalists already became able to develop their skills in rights based journalism especially in child rights journalism, which helps them to enhance their quality to address child issues more qualitatively and in-depth from their own locality. The child journalist group at the local level are providing extra emphasis on the child rights issues as those are coming from the children themselves. Through these major areas, the Children's Express also equally helping to establish child rights, and makes the country more transparent and accountable regarding child rights situation.
There is very high need of developing the skill of journalists in the country in relation to right focused journalism especially those are working at local level. At present, existing newspapers of both national and local level have very little exposure on child rights issues. Therefore, it is strongly needed to highlight the issues more widely. Also the rights based reports, which published in the newspaper motivated the common people to act as pressure group for making authority to improve the child rights situation in the country. On the other hand, the activities has brought different stake-holders in a common platform from which they could work mutually in improving the media and social activism to establish child rights in the society.
The writers are human rights activist and working for Children's Express (Shishu Prokash)