‘Still a lot needed to ensure rights of every child’

Lucknow Uttar Pradesh had witnessed a lot of positive changes in terms of health and nutrition of children, but a lot of hard work was still needed to ensure rights

Lucknow Uttar Pradesh had witnessed a lot of positive changes in terms of health and nutrition of children, but a lot of hard work was still needed to ensure rights of every child, said additional chief secretary, appointment and personnel, UP government, Mukul Singhal.

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Addressing a consultation held to review the National Policy for Children (NPC) here, Singhal said, “If we really want to see positive changes, we need to work with a dedicated mindset without comprising their well being at all. The government along with organisations like CRY has to work hard to ensure better childhood for every kid.”

The UP State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (UPSCPCR) and Child Rights and You (CRY), a non-government organisation working for child rights had jointly organized the review.

Joint secretary, women and child development (WCD) department and member secretary of UPSCPCR Ajai Kumar Singh said, “If we want to ensure overall development of the child, it is important that inter-linkages between different issues of children are recognised so as to address them in a holistic manner.”

Representing UPSCPCR, member of the commission, Jaya Singh said, “The state commission has an important role to play in ensuring that the policies and programmes of the government reach children in the same spirit as mentioned in the document. While on the one hand creation of the policies is important, on the other, we need to understand that a comprehensive review of these policies is equally important to understand what is working well and what needs to be changed for ensuring that things are moving towards benefit of the target group.”

Experts, practitioners and representatives of State Child Rights Commissions from six states, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi attended the consultation. The objective of the review exercise was to undertake multi stakeholders’ inputs through consultative processes at the regional level, so as to identify gaps in the current policy and ways to strengthen it.

Soha Moitra regional director, CRY (North) appealed to all concerned to pro-actively share their experiences and observations to enrich the review process.

Elaborating on the need of the review, she said, “We need to identify the gaps in the available frameworks and to look upon what is important and required to improve the investment by the state and policy makers towards empowering children and communities. Recent data of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2017 again highlights critical trends of crime against children, especially in populous states of north i.e Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi/NCR that contribute to 35.7% of cases. This substantiates acute need of such consultations where we can analyse what is the best we can suggest for the well-being of our children”.

The panelists appreciated the policy framework as it looked at child rights through various dimensions and gave it due recognition. It located child rights within the social, political and economic context and not in isolation. The review gave an opportunity to discuss the emerging challenges such as climate change, cyber safety of children and so on, which can be considered for incorporation.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of community level participation in planning and monitoring. The fact that the accountability frameworks which were missing earlier should be now considered as a priority to realize the vision of the policy, was also raised.

The NPC 2013 provides for its own ‘comprehensive’ review every five years, to be led by the nodal ministry ie the ministry of women and child development. The first such review was scheduled for 2018. It is in this context that the present consultative exercise in being undertaken so that the policy provisions are made more compatible to address the realities related to children in the country.

The inputs of the consultation would be collated and submitted to different stakeholders and policy makers/influences at the national level.