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Waking up from long slumber to protect Childhood

Zafar Bhat. Dated: 8/12/2017 10:21:07 AM

Zafar Bhat
Jammu, Aug 11
Childhood is the most precious stage of a person’s life, therefore the guardians of the children including the government must fulfill the constitutional obligation of ensuring the rights to life for them.
For instance, Goa has taken the initiative in making certain rights available to children under the directive principles of state policy. However, the rights to education, health, nutrition and life among others are legitimate expectations for any human being, particularly children.





But most State Governments have been finding it difficult to meet these expectations.
Notably, a survey report revealed the plight of Indian children where 87 million children were working in different industries, including hazardous establishments such as crackers and glass industries.
The government’s apathy towards children is well known; otherwise at least 50,000 children in the glass industries and 2.70 lakh children in the carpet industry would have been free from bondage. Ironically, the Supreme Court’s 13-year-old directive for setting up a fund for children working in hazardous conditions is yet to be implemented.
Waking up from its long slumber the centre has now decided to set a National Commission for Children to give protection to children and act as an independent “ombudsman” for them.
The development of interagency cooperation acknowledges that no single agency- health, social services, police or voluntary organization – has the pre-eminent responsibility in the assessment of child abuse, generally and child sexual abuse, specifically. Each agency has a prime responsibility for a particular aspect of the problem.
Pertinently, Child abuse includes child battering, extreme punishment, hard labour, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, including incest and exploitation, and abandonment.