National Consultation on "Justice for Children"

Justice for Children
A National Consultation on the Rights of the child
November 13-15, 2005
Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi

"Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This Children's day, CRY- Child Rights and You, the premier Indian child rights organisation is organising the first of its kind - National Consultation on "Justice for Children". 58 years after independence, Indian children are yet to enjoy the rights granted to them by the Constitution. Basic rights to quality education, good health and a safe nurturing environment are a distant dream for millions of our children. This consultation is therefore an attempt at engaging with different segments of society "NGOs, activists, political leaders, academics, judiciary, media, health professionals and the corporate sector, towards jointly ensuring a more just world for Indian children.

The multi disciplinary consultation aims to create a common understanding of the rights that every child should be guaranteed irrespective of class, caste, gender or religion. It will focus on how child rights issues and justice norms are perceived and negotiated by groups and individuals in different contexts such as: living conditions of children outside of parental care, rights of children with special needs, gender issues, community support systems; public services; privatisation and governance; juvenile justice strategies and their impact.

Also present, will be all members of the QICAC network (Quality Institutional Care and Alternatives for Children), who have been working to improve the situation of children outside parental care by engaging with governments and civil society for over 5 years. Children in institutions face the severest forms of rights violations and yet, receive negligible public attention. Members of this network (including CRY) will share their experiences and insights with the larger group.

The consultation will be marked by debate and dialogue. Field level realities of the impact of complex situations like disasters and conflicts on children will also be discussed.

This will be a meeting ground for multiple perspectives and concerns to participate and influence justice for children. The two days will be divided into various sessions, facilitated by experts /professionals from the relevant field, in partnership with CRY:

The Sessions:

November 13, 2005

Child Rights and the Constitution

• Understand child rights in context of the larger HR framework
• Use the knowledge of the legal framework creatively, using sound judgments to facilitate optimal outcomes for women and children
• Examine the nature of legal systems and the roles of professionals within
• International judgments /achievements
• Role of law enforcement agencies in assuring rights to children

Towards a people's movement

• Use learnings from other movements such as women's and environment to make child rights movement politically and socially forceful

Child and Culture

• Examine culture as an effective and non threatening tool to advocate child rights
• Get a perspective on other movements that have successfully used culture to influence and inform
• Culture as a powerful and creative tool for expression and information for children
• What is the literature available for children?
• Influence of culture in influencing children's rights-facilitate a cultural environment that is child friendly
• Deal with existing stereotypes and myths that are experienced as discrimination by children

Policy and law

• Evaluate the Goa Children's Act
• What are the successes of the Goa Trafficking Act that may be integrated into other acts for children
• Reviews the JJ act in context of the CRC and human rights conventions
• How to ensure that the JJ act doesn't criminalize children (use Scottish, south African and Ugandan examples)
• Review the OCH
• Share information on NPC

Advocacy for Rights

• The what, why, where and how of advocacy in context of Child Rights
• To create change, what are the systems that we need to collaborate with-at local, national and international levels
• UN - as a system is it necessary to work with-why, why not
• Develop strategies to establish a powerful and credible child rights movement/voice in the country
• Role of the State and what are the different engagements required at different levels of power

Media Advocacy and Child Rights

• Role of films/docu
• How to use mainstream media to influence issues from child rights lens
• How to sustain media attention on the issue rather than a "story"

November 14, 2005

Role of Information & Documentation in Energising the child rights movements

    - Role of Information in Challenging Power Dynamics

What is documentation- concept and linkages between data, information and knowledge. Documentation as different from library.

    - Documentation as a tool for advocacy
Role of documentation in Information sharing and exchange; documentation- from primary and secondary sources; physical and electronic forms; print based and visual; documentation outputs in advocacy mode; types of outputs

    - Role of alliances/networks
Strengthen leadership within core groups, equip them with skills on networking and collaboration, facilitate them to recognize the importance of "being is becoming" i.e. importance of self reflection on personal attitudes, belief systems and practices

Alternate Care models

a) Adoption, Foster Care and Sponsorship

• Recognise these as important but not final solutions
• Evaluate the role of adoption agencies in ensuring child safety
• Identify existing loopholes in existing laws that need to be plugged and how

b) Community participation

• What does community mean?
• Identify ways in which community may be involved for children without parental care
• Importance of creating community ownership through creative, sustainable processes
• Learning for India from International developments such as South Africa, Uganda and Scotland wherein community involvement has been encouraged

Quality of Care

a) Learnings from research and children in institutions

• Establishing quality benchmarks in homes
• Establish a code of ethics for professionals responsible for protection of children-home officials, CWC members
• The responsibility of the State in arresting the numbers
• Are homes equipped to deal with children with disabilities, HIV infected, girl children etc

b) Reality of children's lives

• Address the various forms of exploitation faced by children : at home, on streets, in states in conflict and as workers
• Impact of these on child's mental health and growth
• Examine existing laws/acts on child labour, child sexual abuse and trafficking

Health Care

• access to health-privatisation of health facilities and its impact on childcare, evaluate the national rural health policy
• what does health mean- absence of awareness on mental health and disabilities by mainstream health care professionals/systems

Children and Education

• State responsibility towards Right to Education
• How to make teaching creative, engaging and inclusive (sp focus on children with learning disabilities)
• Making education process relevant to child's context

November 15, 2005

This will be a culmination of the deliberations held over the previous 2 days.

CRY perspective and experience

Closing: Handing over the recommendations

Note: some of the sessions are tentative and may be re-scheduled.

For more information, contact cryinfo.del@crymail.org  more info