Activists Say India's Proposed Child Protection Bill Is the Wrong Pill
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CHENNAI, Dec 16 (OneWorld) - Activists are demanding a review of a draft Bill to set up a national commission for protecting the rights of India's 375 million children, saying it is toothless, lacks statutory powers and ignores the disabled.
According to the government, the National Commission for Children (NSC) will work for "the better protection of child rights and for promoting the best interests of children," of whom 11 million live on the streets and 400,000 are prostitutes. While welcoming the move per se, activists and advocacy groups have called for an urgent review of the "haste and manner in which a proposal of such significance is being decided upon." A growing movement has urged the government to facilitate a wider participatory debate on the design, status and functioning of the NSC. Key contentious issues include the lack of statutory powers for what is intended to be a regulatory body. Unlike similar bodies for human rights and women, the NSC won't have an independent investigative arm. Worse, disabled children have no representation. Says State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) member S. Sambandham, "The bill is ill-drafted. The Commission, as it has been conceived presently, will be largely a rubber stamp." "When the National Human Rights Commission and the SHRC are given an independent investigative team headed by a director general of police, why is the NSC denied this essential power to follow up a case?" he asks. A statutory body to protect child rights is sorely needed. While almost 40 percent of the country's population is under 14 years of age, India also has the largest number of poor children in the world. Sixty-three percent of children below five years are undernourished and every year, up to 800,000 children die from preventable diseases such as diarrhea. The country has the world's largest number of working children. Sambandham argues that the proposed commission should not merely be a recommendatory body but also have the powers to take action. He points out that the draft Bill does not mention the Right to Education at all. "The commission is supposed to "encourage study, research and documentation about child abuse and offences against the child" but cannot press criminal charges against the offenders. We all know there are great violations of child rights. We need action, which is what the commission should be focussing on, not more talking," he says. The draft Bill allows the nominated members access to any jail, lockup, state homes or other institutions meant for children, but fails to mention schools, where abuses such as corporal punishment are rampant. While the vulnerable girl child is especially mentioned and nominated members will include experts with proven experience in education, child health, social welfare, juvenile justice, child labor, sociology and the government administrative services, there is no mention of children with disability. Says the deputy director of Vidya Sagar (formerly Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu), Rajul Padmanabhan, "One in every 10 children in India is disabled. While the draft Bill must also have a representative speaking for the needs of disabled children. This sort of sustained seclusion denies them their basic rights." While 5-6 percent of India's population is disabled, less than 1 percent of children with disability receive education of any kind. The chairperson of the Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB), Vidya Shankar, feels that a commission such as the NSC needs persons who will not merely lend their names but spend enormous amount of time and energy for the cause of children, with strong interpersonal and diplomatic skills. The JWB is a statutory government body. Shankar also serves as a magistrate at the juvenile courts, which handle cases of "children in conflict with the law." "There is evidence that even with the human rights commissions, there is no follow up of the cases - mostly custodial deaths and police excesses - they have referred. These colonial clubs have all the big names with very little field commitment or results," maintains Shankar. Without the power to act on their findings, many so-called authorities get frustrated. "These commissions take it out on the government, and call for a confrontation whereas a proactive approach is required. Enormous investments in creating new systems make us forget the existing ones, or the importance of working with them in close coordination," explains Shankar. Asks the director of the Indian Council of Child Welfare, Dr Ananthalakshmi, "What can a commission do for children? It alone cannot deliver at the state level." She points out that each state has a peculiar or unique problem - such as female feticide in Tamil Nadu in the south and Punjab in the north, carpet weaving in Kashmir or tanneries in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. "Domestic labor is universal. We have children in hazardous industries. Trafficking is another major issue among the southern states. Solutions too will have to be localized," says Ananthalakshmi. Worldwide, children's rights are governed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, and ratified by India in 1992. CRC is the first legally binding global prescription on how the world's nations must do justice to their children. It recognizes the exceptional vulnerability of the children, and proclaims that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance. It is guided by the principle of a "first call for children" - that the essential needs of children should be given highest priority in the allocation of resources at all times. Although Indian law guarantees the Right to Survival ("to prevent any action to a child from being born alive or to cause it to die after birth") the practice of female infanticide continues. In recent times it has manifested itself as technology-assisted feticide with the mushrooming of "ultrasound clinics". But, says Ila Hukku, the director of Child Relief and You (CRY), one of the largest nongovernmental organizations for children in India, "In practice it cannot be said that all the existing laws concerning Indian children are in full conformity with the Constitutional guarantee of civil rights and freedom though they are presumed to be so in legal theory. Courts can only act upon public interest litigation." Justice for India's children remains a far cry. Says Hukku, "Children are the most invisible, unheard and ignored section among the marginalized in this country." |
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