Bihar Children Reports on their rights

Transcription

1 Bihar Children Reports on their rights Duration :

2 Bihar Children Reports on Their Rights AN ALTERNATIVE REPORT PREPARED BY THE CHILDREN OF BIHAR ON THE ACTUAL RIGHTS GRANTED TO THEM WITH RESPECT TO THE RIGHTS GUARANTEED FOR IN UNCRC DURATION: DOCUMENATION PROCESS: Child Researchers: Puja Kumari, Om Prakash, Pawan Kumar Mukhiya, Santoshi Kumari, Puja Kumari, Basu Kumar, Saurabh Sinha, Pankaj Kumar, Rani Kumari ANALYSIS AND EDITING PROCESS: K. N. Giri, Convenor Arun Das, State Convenor Advocacy Unit- CACL- Bihar, Bodhgaya CACL Bihar, Patna Gandhi Peace Foundation Centre Bodhgaya, Gaya, Bihar

3 Foreword Gandhi Peace Foundation Centre of Bodhgaya, Bihar is the Advocacy Unit of CACL Bihar Chapter, and was entrusted with the responsibility of the facilitation of children s Alternative CRC Report preparation for the Bihar State. It has called a preparatory workshop meeting at Rajgir, Bihar during August, At Rajgir many local organizations from all over Bihar have been invited by GPFC to participate with its selected 55 children. At Rajgir 10 children have been selected for the CRC report writing by 55 children under the guidelines of representatives from CACL-CS, Kolkata and they have been given full information about how to prepare themselves for the report writing. Then again a workshop for the report writing by the 10 selected children have been organized with the effort of GPFC, Bodhgaya and it was held on Feb at Khadi Gram Udyog Samiti, Lakhibag, Manpur, Gaya. At Gaya workshop the children and its supportive organizations have been given training and know how to prepare the CRC report by the children. Each child had to study and survey 10 other children with the questionnaire on the status of the rights of the children in their respective region. Campaign Against Child Labour is a group of individuals or organizations who felt for the necessity of the child rights to be implemented at all levels to minimize the child labour problem in our country and thereby became a platform for understanding and analyzing various concerns. It began functioning from the year It functions in 21 states of India. The main aim of this movement is to eradicate child labour totally from this country. This body firmly disagreed the last two reports made by the Government. Therefore it thought of preparing an alternative report. But for preparing this alternative report, the body thought children are the best, since then the report will bring an impact. The right holder s view on their rights. Since, right to get information, right to express and participation plays an important role in the lives of the children, therefore Campaign against Child Labour aims at constituting various child groups all over the Nation for exercising and demanding for their rights by children themselves. This alternative report will be prepared by children and made as a state report in 14 states of India. These reports will be then taken together for constitution of state reports and one National report which will be considered as alternative report. The all necessary tasks for preparation of such a report like that of collection of facts, analysis of those facts, documenting the report are done directly by children with interest. We therefore hope that this report prepared by children will make the adults of the nation realize their responsibilities towards their children. Campaign Against Child Labour- Bihar

4 Introduction First of all we children thought to express our concern towards our rights through this alternative report. Right to survival, right to protection, right to participation and right to development are the rights which comes into thought when we children hear the concept, rights of the child. 1. Right to survival We all have the right to survive, we need food, shelter, pollution free environment and access to safe drinking water and better health facilities should be made easily available for survival. 2. Right to protection There should be facility of security in the area. There is a need of a protection in family, school and public places. The girls should feel protected in the area and the girls should not be allowed by the government and society to married off at a young age. We all should have the right to be protected by the state. 3. Right to participation Children from rich, poor and vulnerable and marginalized sections of the society should have equal right to participate in any government, public, private functions, schemes etc. For participating in various platforms of society, the children should get an access to informations. The boys and the girls should be allowed to exercise participation equally in the society. 4. Right to development All the children who are marginalized and could not catch up with the process of the society due to some problem should also get an access to this right. The children who have left education for some reason should get an access to education again. Girls and boys should get equal opportunity for recreation and other developmental programs. We all should be provided the opportunity by the state to develop ourselves. The marginalized children or rather we children do not get access of any of such rights in our society. Through this report we want to draw attention of everyone towards situations where we see some rights being violated, but as children could not protest many of the times. For example, early girl child marriage in the areas, exploitation of the police on the children living on the streets and platforms, abuse and exploitation of young girl in our area etc. There are many such other instances happening all over. We also want to put forward the various rights, which are assured to us, and we are not being able to get them many a times. This is the reason why the report is being prepared by us and not the adults. Therefore our first and last slogan will be that all the children should get equal access to the rights assured to them. We feel for this reason, family, society and Government should be more responsible.till now there is a tradition that children were listening from their adults, but now the time has come when the children wants to come forward and tell their plights to their elders. This is why this alternative report required to be submitted by the children. Thus as an alternative report of the Government of India report to the United Nation s Child Rights Committee we children have written this report.

5 Preparing the report To start the process, there was a workshop cum meeting from August, 2008 arranged in Rajgir, Bihar. There 54 children participated for this workshop. We all together got to know the rights, which are assured to us by the Government. Later we also discussed what we want and what we don t want. The workshop helped us to understand and analyze the rights of the child and the ways in which they are being exploited. We also came to know that all children have equal rights. From this workshop 10 of our friends got selected to carry the process ahead of preparing the alternative report. After this there was a two days workshop meeting organized at Lakhibag, Manpur, Gaya on 10 th -11 th February, 2009 for the 10 children where they came to know about the ways in collecting data for the report. 9 children along with their sponsoring NGO s representative participated the workshop meeting. Two resource persons from CACL-CS, Kolkata, Mr. Sanjeev Kr. Singh & Miss Archi Das attended and headed the workshop meeting for 2 days. All of us 9 children were asked individually to know whether the children are getting access to their rights or not and what are the things they want and what they don t want to be included in the questionnaire. Each one of us has to do survey from 10 other children from the respective areas. The data was therefore collected from 90 children. A brief of the collated data is given in this report. During this survey, we collected data from all types of children like child labours, physically disabled children, children working as domestic help, once trafficked children and with them there were also children who go to school regularly and who are droped out from school. We would like to mention here few names of the children and their locations from whom we interviewed the questionnaire like, Lagni Kumari (field worker), Manju Kumari (illiterate),sunil Kumar(working in hotel),rinki Kumari( sand lifting)all from Bhojpur district, Suraji Kumari(child labour) from Rajhat, Akbarpur, Nawada district, Pappu Kumar & Om Prakash(child labour), Ranju Kumari (school goer) from Naubatpur, Patna district. Also interview taken from the children of the areas of Sardih & Manigacchi blocks of Darbhanga district and children from Bhagalpur districts.

6 Problems, which we faced during the survey: The children were not able to understand all our questions. The children were not speaking many things due to fear. In many places the parents of these children were scared themselves and were anxious and therefore did not let their children answer our questions. Many of us had to miss school for the completion of the survey. Since there were many questions, the children in many places were not ready to answer some of them. During the survey, could not get support of the guardians of the children, since they lose hope with the word survey only. Many such govt. & private surveys have been done earlier also with no result. Some contractor of stone crusher unit did not let us talk with the child labours working at there units and ill-treated with us. While taking photographs of children working at brick kiln and road side dhabas, we had to face problems in some places. We could not get assistance from the local administration also. Since there were more than 200 questions, there were some children who ran away with boredom. Even then we tried our best to complete our survey.

7 The information, which we came to know through the survey Addition from Campaign Against Child Labour the children with whom interaction was established during the survey are mainly the resident of some interior villages, where most of the time they are disregarded of their basic rights. Though this report is not equipped to provide overall picture of the condition of the children of entire Bihar, but it will always give an idea of the situation of marginalized and vulnerable children of our society. Government s scheme like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Bal Sramik Unmoolan Karyakaram etc. are not known by the most of the children. For this reason they are unable to get benefit of the government schemes. Like non admission of needy children in Kasturba Balika Vidyalaya. In Bihar government s primary school the role of Mahadalit-teachers newly appointed by the government is not better than the previous teachers. Still the children are working as child labour and they are not attending schools. We also came to know during our survey that the Mid-Day meal scheme under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan is also not successful. The better quality rice meant for this scheme is being replaced by the bad quality rice which is being used to cook the meal for the children. In the Newspaper there is news about the children becoming sick after eating the meal in schools of Nalanda, Nawada, Bhojpur, Kaimur, Bhagalpur & Darbhanga districts. One of our friend Saurabh Kumar of Akbarpur, Nawada district, who is one of the child researcher of this alternative report, was doing survey in his area along with his facilitator Miss Manisha Bharti and representative Mr. Santosh Kumar of his sponsor institution at Nawada, where he came to know that : (i) In Kasturba Balika School only the rich children could get admission. In naxal affected villages of Bishunpur, Laxmannagar, Khairivan, Basant nagar, Vinoba nagar, Baratar, Shankar Nagar, Gazalpur, Kazi katar, Srikattha etc. in Budhua & Baksanda panchayats of Akbarpur block of Nawada district, there are still dozens of young girls are deprived of getting education who are living 2-3 kms away from the school and they could have been given chances of getting admission into Kasturba Balika Vidyalaya. (ii) Due to the negligence of teachers in Child Labour Special School at Akbarpur block of Nawada district, there are scheduled caste children of village Pirouta and Akbarpur hat are admitted instead of the many child labours of that area who are still out of school. These are the situation of one of the area of Bihar and it is a bitter truth that more or less same situation is there in whole of Bihar.

8 Some real experiences of the children Ripu Kumar Ripu Kumar is a 12 years old child of village Pirouta, Akbarpur block, Nawada district. His father Upendra Jha and mother Gita Devi is landless labour. His father is a drunkard so his mother and he have to do labour work for their livelihood. Ripu Kumar is working as Khalasi in Tempo and Trekker. He works from 5 a.m. to 7-8 p.m. Ripu Kumar participated in the national conference at Bhubneshwar and workshop meeting of Rajgir, Bihar. His father has abandoned wine after the efforts of an NGO and is now doing as Pujari in a temple. But Ripu Kumar is still doing as Khalasi due to poor economic condition of his family. He went school for few days with the efforts of NGO but he left school because he could not get any government help to continue his study, as he is a Brahmin caste. Ripu is earning Rs per day after working too hard for whole day. Rampukar Kumar Rampukar is a 13 years old boy and physically handicapped from both of his legs. He is from village Makhachak, Bakhri block, Begusarai district. His parents are poor and this is why he has to do labour work. He could not got tri-cycle from any where due to poverty and finally got tri-cycle when he attended the Bhubneshwar child conference in 2007 by CACL effort. He is doing Biri making work from 8 a.m to 6 p.m and is earning about Rs per day. He was very much eager to get education but due to poverty he is unable to get education. He tells that he is not getting any help from government and he does not know about any government schemes. Madan Kumar Madan Kumar is a 11 years old boy from Sheikhpura district. Due to poor parents he also works as child labour work in fields, brick kiln along with his parents. Madan works as labourer for hours whole day and earns Rs per day. He is also deprived of education and he will be left illiterate for the rest of life. Subodh Kumar Subodh Kumar is a 9 years old boy. He is from Bhikhampur village of Roh block, Nawada. He is a child labour due to poverty of his parents and instead of going to school he is working as child labour for the Biri leaves contractor. There he has to pick up the Biri leaves from the jungle and then drying it,packing into sacks and then loading the sacks to truck etc. work. Some times he goes to forest to cut wood and bring it to sell in the market. In this way he earns Rs per day when he works. He could not go to school for education as his parents are poor and he has to help them. Soni Kumari Soni Kumari is a 10 years old girl from Hariharpur village of Bakrour panchayat in Bodhgaya block of Gaya district. Her father name is Ramdhan Das. She is from the village where before 1999 there was no government or private school. In 1999 with the efforts of Gandhi Peace Foundation Centre, Bodhgaya, Sri G.R. Khairnar of (Mumbai) has helped to open and run a primary school in this village. All the children of Hariharpur village has been encouraged to take admission in this school by Soni Kumari and she also took admission in this school from class- I and she played an active role to aware other children of this village to take admission in the school for education. Now this village of 50 families of 100% scheduled caste population is totally free from child labour. This school is now run by a foreign aided institution Vikalp therefore no child is working here as child labour and all are getting education. Before Soni Kumari was doing as child labour and later on now she is studying at Kasturba Balika Vidyalaya in Basarhi, Bodhgaya.

9 Results of the Survey The following results were collected from the children researchers from the 90 children from their interviews ( in percentage). Right to life- view points of the children Sr. No. Questions Yes No Don t Know 1. Whether health check up takes place in school Whether there is availability of regular vaccination Whether the families have ration card Whether there is proper sanitation system in the house Whether the surrounding is clean or not Whether there is any idea of HIV/AIDS Do the Government spread awareness regarding rights of the children Remarks of the above results by CACL The above chart helps us to understand the fact that though there is effort in addressing health, basic entitlement, there is yet another aspect which is totally ignored by Government. This is the right to information about HIV/AIDS, child rights and clean and hygienic place of residence. There is lack of amenities for the general people especially who are the poorest.

10 Right to development- view points of the children Sr. No. Questions Yes No Don t Know 1. Do all children go to school Whether school education is for free Whether there is separate toilets for boys and girls in the schools Whether there is adequate number of teachers in the school Do schools have a disabled friendly environment Prevalence of corporal punishment in the school Whether there is recreation facilities in the school Whether aware about Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Whether aware about the scholarship facilities Remarks of the above results by CACL Though we have right to education claiming free and compulsory education for all children from the age of 6 14 years, but still the above chart clearly depicts that yet many children are out of school, the schools have no attention for the disabled children and free education still remains as mirage to many. Apart from this the children are even not aware of scholarships and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

11 Right to protection - views of the children Sr. No. Questions Yes No Don t Know 1. Whether the girls feel protected Whether the girls are married off at a young age yrs 2. or not 3 Whether there is child labour and from which age yrs. Whether there is any law to stop child labour (awareness level) 5 Whether there is any welfare and protective measures for the street children by Government (awareness level) Remarks of the above results by CACL The fact came out clearly that the right to protection of every child is the most ignored factor in our society. The children themselves are not aware of the protection process, which is designed for them by the Government. Most of them feel insecure. Right to participation - views of the children Sr. No. Questions Yes No Don t Know 1. Whether there is participation in planning and celebration of school Festivals Whether children s decisions are counted on Whether the girls are encouraged for participation Remarks of the above results by CACL There are many organizations and campaigns who are constantly aiming to address the right to participation for children through their programs and activities, but yet there is a high amount of ignorance of the Government on this aspect. And the most hindering fact is the traditional thinking about children, which they are vulnerable and need to be guided and protected always.

12 Recommendations What we want from family Children want from family love and respect. Our thoughts and expression should be considered in the family. There should not be any discrimination between boys and girls. Early child marriage should be stopped. When they are studying at home then they should not be disturbed for doing other works. Curbing atrocities and ill- treatment towards boys and girls by any member of family. We should be helped by our family to fulfill our useful dreams. The elders of the family should not fight and quarrel in front of us. What we want from society We want love and protection from the society. We the poor and neglected children should be helped financially and mentally to rehabilitate us. We want to participate in social, cultural, educational, developmental, political and recreational programmes. School teachers should not misbehave and ill treat us on the ground of poverty, disability and marginalisation. Discrimination of religion and caste should be finished from the society. No girls below the age of 18 years should be married off. There should not be any discrimination between the rich and poor. Eve- teasing and ill treatment with the girl-child should be stopped. There should be ban on smoking, chewing tobacco and Gutkha and use of any other intoxication at public places. Taking work from the children should be treated as serious crime by the society.

13 What we want from Government For the sake of secure future of the children, birth certificate and ration card should be provided easily to all the children by the government. To provide employment for elders in the family so that children will not be deprived of education and other necessities. Government should make easy availability of safe drinking water to every village. Availability of suitable health facilities in the every village. Provision of adequate nutrition and vitamins through the Anganwadi to all the needy children. Provision of proper health facilities for the protection from venerable and epidemic diseases like Leprosy, T.B., Malaria, Kalazaar etc. for the children. Vaccination for protection of children from all types of diseases should be provided free to all years of children should be provided free and equal quality education in all government institutions. There should be separate toilets for both boys and girls and providing library, computer training, safe drinking water facilities in the schools. Viklang (Disabled) children should be provided special facilities for education in the school. Free health and treatment facilities for all types of diseases for all in govt. hospitals. Eradicating child labour by enforcing the law actively to ban child labour and to rehabilitate them residential schools should be opened. Government should arrange workshops, trainings or Television & Radio programs on the laws, policies and rights that are granted for children. All sorts of addiction should be checked on and stopped so that no children will be affected in addiction.

14 Concluding Remarks We have collected the data on the questionnaire and the results were put together for the final alternative report preparation and here are the outcome of the report writing by the children from the districts of Patna, Bhojpur, Nawadah, Bhagalpur, Khagaria and Darbhanga in Bihar who have participated all along with much interest to write the report. Through this report preparation we came to know about our rights granted by the government and also came to know how far the government is implementing the child rights. And whether government schemes for the children are reaching to all the needy children? Through this alternative report to UNCRC, we want to pressurize the Govt. of India to implement our rights effectively, so that all the children will be able to get its actual benefits. We children want from government to declare all the 0-18 age group children as child and the children from this age group working anywhere to be treated as child labour. And government should enforce its Child Labour Act strictly to liberate the children from all types of child labour work. So that children rights are not violated. Government should provide equal qualitative education to all the children. We all children are grateful to Campaign Against Child Labour who has provided us the opportunity to express our thoughts and problems before our elders through this alternative report. We hope that our problems which are mentioned in our reports will be solved by our family, society and the government and our rights will be implemented by the government. We also hope that in future the Govt. of India will give importance to the children alternative report and think twice before sending their final report to UNCRC.

15 The organizations and children who helped through the process of the report preparation are as follows : Name of the children Name of the organization from where these children are coming Age Sex Class 1. Pooja Kumari Sampoorna Dalit Gramin Vikash Samiti, Haldi Chapra, Maner, Patna. (Secretary - Ram Pravesh Ram ) 2. Om Prakash Prabha Gramin Vikash Samiti, Madhopur, 3. Pawan Kumar Mukhiya Maner, Patna. (Secretary- Suman Kumar ) Mahila Vikash Ashram, Darbhanga, Jhanjharpur, Madhubani. (Vice President Smt. Kiran Jha. ) 13 Girl VIII 14 Boy VIII 17 Boy IX 4.Santoshi Kumari Mahila Vikash Ashram, Darbhanga. 14 Girl VI 5. Pooja Kumari Maya Ram Social & Welfare Society, 13 Girl VII Jaiprakash Nagar, Ajad Gali, Khagaria. 6. Basu Kumar Maya Ram Social & Welfare Society, 13 Boy VIII Khagaria. (Secretary - Rajiv Ranjan ) 7. Saurabh Sinha Mahila Rakhsha Mandali, Akbarpur, 13 Boy VII Nawadah. (Secy. Smt. Dharamshila Devi ) 8. Pankaj Kumar Gram Didi Sanstha, Sikandarpur, Bhagalpur. 13 Boy VI 9. Rani Kumari Garm Didi Sanstha, Sikandarpur, Bhagalpur. 14 Girl VII In Rajgir, Bihar 54 children ( Male -28 & Female -26 ) along with 29 representatives of the organizations associated with the children participated the preparatory meeting for the Alternative Report. They were from the districts of Patna, Bhojpur, Madhubani, Supaul, Samastipur, Khagaria, Nalanda, Nawada, Gaya, Darbhanga, Chapra, Bhagalpur, Arwal, Vaishali, Kaimur, Rohtas, Sheikhpura, Banka & Betia.