Frequently Asked Questions on Child Rights

• Why has CRY changed its name? / What was the need to change the name after 28 years? / Why is it named Child Rights and You?

28 years of work with over 2500 village and slum communities across 18 states has taught CRY that the child rights approach is the most effective way to ensure sustainable change. These are rights guaranteed by our Constitution and their continued violation is simply illegal and unjust. We are changing our name as part of an effort to widen awareness of and enlist greater support for child rights.

• Does the name change mean that so far CRY has been a relief organisation only?

CRY's work has been continually evolving as we have learned from our experience with various issues in diverse contexts. From the first shelter for street children CRY supported in 1979, to our current approach of empowering children and their communities to achieve long-term, irreversible change has been a journey of mutual learning. The United Nation Convention on Child Rights has provided the framework for our work since 1992. Since then CRY has tested the approach, established its efficacy and implemented it across all our programmes.

• How does CRY perceive its role vis-a-vis children - an advocate/ a grantmaker or financial funder/ an activist/a provider?

CRY is a voice of and for India's children and their rights. It seeks to enlist support from all sections of society by building awareness of the situation of children and the need to make child rights our foremost national priority. It also partners almost 200 programmes across 18 states reaching 2500 village and slum communities working to ensure the rights of the most marginalised children.

• What is the role of CRY in ensuring Child Rights?

India's children will only achieve the rights guaranteed to them if every Indian believes this should be so and exercises all the power at our command - as parents, neighbours, consumers, employees, business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, professionals, bureaucrats, activists and most importantly as citizens - to make this a reality. CRY's role is to amplify the voice of India's children to reach large numbers of Indians and enlist their support for this cause.

We do this by partnering NGOs at grassroots levels, mobilising people to address the root causes that leads to violation of child rights and by building awareness on issues through media. We play the role of an advocacy organisation that speaks, demands, negotiates as required with relevant state or citizen bodies for the rights of children.

• How CRY ensure child rights at policy level?

CRY analyses all government policies to assess their impact on the rights of children. We engage with government agencies at all levels from villages to the national level to ensure that existing child-friendly policies are implemented and that new policies are evolved where necessary. This engagement ranges from advising the government on projects for street children to studying the conditions in juvenile homes, to drafting the current Juvenile Justice Act, coordinating government relief work in disaster areas, consulting with the Planning Commission and advocating for the fundamental Right to Education.
We also plan to work with various levels of Government to promote a comprehensive Child Rights Act/Law for India and the formation of a strong Child Rights Commission.

• Is CRY therefore not going to support relief efforts from now on?

The reality of India almost 60 years since independence is that millions of children have their very survival threatened on a daily basis. You cannot ask a child who is starving, out of school, or being abused and exploited to wait for long-term change to happen. However, even in their relief work - be it with balwadis and non-formal centres or disaster affected communities - CRY programmes are designed to ensure the longer term objectives of community empowerment towards sustainable change.

• What is the difference between Relief and Rights?

The relief approach addresses the symptoms of the problems - malnourishment, children out of school, children in the work force, female infanticide etc. The rights approach identifies the underlying causes of these problems - caste, gender and class biases, livelihoods and absent or indifferent governance - and finds long-term solutions by ensuring children and communities are informed and empowered to seek their entitlements under the law.

The relief approach treats children as objects of sympathy needing our help. The rights approach recognizes them as citizens who are entitled to all that has been promised them under the Constitution and by the United Nations Child Rights Charter.

• What steps has CRY taken to ensure the implementation of UN Convention?

The UN Child Rights Convention provides the framework for all CRY's work. It's provisions determine how CRY selects programmes to support, how these programmes are designed and evaluated, and the laws and policies that CRY advocates for children.

• How does CRY reach these basic rights to children?

At CRY, we've learned that permanent change is only possible when children, their parents and their communities are informed about their rights and engage with their local government bodies to ensure the root causes of their immediate problems are solved. Based on this, we evolved our philosophy of community mobilisation - empowering communities (the immediate family, the immediate neighbourhood and the village or the town) to resolve the problem affecting them.
To achieve this we partner grassroots NGOs who can work with these communities. CRY helps these projects with project-planning, financial management, material requirements, perspective-building programmes, baseline data establishment, organisational development, training for skill building, information support, and developing promotional materials.

• How are Child Rights and Human Rights linked?

Children do not live in isolation. They belong to families, communities and society at large. They are always the most vulnerable to any situation be it poverty, natural disasters, displacement, social biases and prejudices. It is impossible to find long-term solutions to the issues confronting children without addressing these root-causes.

A child may not be in school for multiple reasons:
- There may be no school in her village
- The school may be dysfunctional
- She may be prevented from going to school because of her caste, gender or religion
- Her parents may need her to work, look after younger siblings or migrate due to economic pressures

Ensuring she is not only enrolled in school, but stays there and gets an adequate education requires addressing each of those underlying problems.

If you find yourself left with many questions, need to clarify term(s) that sound like jargon, or would like to share a comment, feedback or simply would like to know more on child rights, write to us at webinfo@crymail.org or meet any of us from the CRY team at a CRY office nearest to you.