Let’s safeguard children from cruelty

By Carol Aloysius

* November 26, 2013: A seven-year-old boy who went to the Welikada prison grounds to play cricket was allegedly sexually molested by two prison officers who tricked him into the toilet.

* December 2013: At least eight children who sat the grade 5 scholarship examination, of which the results were released recently, were tortured due to them not performing successfully at the examination. Some of them ended up in hospital, one running away from home, another being burned with a hot iron on the face and groin and another badly beaten up by the mother.

* January 8, 2014: Media reported a five-year-old girl from Alawathugoda suffering severe burn injuries when her aunt (Punchi) poured boiling water on her neck.

* January 2014: Child Development and Women’s Affairs Minister Tissa Karaliyadde is reported to have said in Parliament that there were 3,800 offences against children – including 313 cases of child labour, 944 not attending school and 1,054 in need of care and protection.

The question is, protection from whom?

From reports that dominate the print and electronic media, it is evident that some of the most common perpetrators are their closest and most trusted relatives - often mothers and fathers, siblings, uncles and grandparents.

To halt this frightening surge in cruelty to children, the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), under the patronage of the Child Development and Women’s Affairs Ministry, launched a Day Against Cruelty To Children on January 7. On this day, 1,500 schoolchildren walked from Independence Square to Navarangahala Hall at Royal College. Their objective, to raise awareness on pertinent issues of cruelty and violence faced by children in our country.

Cruelty in many forms

Cruelty to children takes many forms. It could be children being abandoned, an increasing phenomenon in recent months; new-born infants being killed and dumped in hospital toilets or buried alive by their parents; toddlers left in unsafe environments and dying as a result of parents leaving toxic substances within their reach, such as the case of the four-year-old who drank kerosene from a bottle and died in Nagoda last week; or children sexually, physically and mentally abused to the extent that they were forced to end their lives.

Cruelty to children can also come in the form of malnutrition, one of the biggest problems that currently face our health officials. According to the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2006/7, the low weight prevalence in Sri Lanka is 16.6 percent, while 21.1 percent of children below the age of five are underweight and another 14.7 percent are wasted, while the stunting prevalence is 17.3 percent.

Shocking statistics

As if that is not enough, we have shocking statistics, that the prevalence of anaemia in children under five years is as high as 29 percent, according to a Medical Research Institute survey, and that an equal number of children are Vitamin A deficient. Any decision to stop the mid-day meal for deserving children must, therefore, be carefully re-considered and alternatives found to improve their nutrition levels.

At the same time, obesity is on the increase among children from both urban and rural areas, leading to early non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiac diseases - emerging challenges that place a heavy burden on our already strained health budgets.

Cruelty to children also occurs when the regulations on compulsory education for all children up to age 14 are violated, whatever the reason. Surveys have also found that some children have never attended school despite free education being available to them. The most recent statistics also state that many schools including those in the city have no toilets or have a very few toilets, while others have no access to water.

Options

So, what are the options? How can we provide these children their basic rights and in this case, their right to be safe from all forms of cruelty and abuse inflicted on them?

Let’s consider some examples of how international child-friendly organisations such as UNICEF and UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) have acted to create safer places for children in countries where they are most vulnerable to abuse and cruelty.

To cite the UNICEF 2010 report, child protection systems were set up in as many as 131 countries. It led to co-ordination activities by international and national organisations and gender-based violence in many countries. Around the world, embedding child protection in national laws and policies has also opened the door to firmer guarantees of child rights. As the report rightly states, laws can clearly define how children’s rights should be upheld.

In Malawi, five years of intensive lobbying by UNICEF and its partners saw the Parliament finally enacting the Childcare, Protection and Justice Bill.

In Botswana, where 118,000 children live as orphans, many due to HIV/AIDS, the government was helped to strengthen the national orphan care program and introduce the ‘smart card’ that allowed orphans to purchase food of their choice. In Paraguay, a public debate on abuse within the families was sparked by a medical campaign, promoting a rise in reporting such abuses.

Physical punishment is still an accepted means of disciplining children in many parts of the world. In 2008, in Costa Rica, child-friendly legislators passed a law which took a critical step towards ending this practice, upholding the right to discipline without physical punishment or humiliating treatment.

Lankan child’s needs

What is the position of the Lankan child?

Sri Lanka is already a signatory to the Charter on Elimination of Violence Against Children and has regularly endorsed many Acts that protect children from violence. Child Rights are endorsed in our Constitution. Unlike many countries, literacy rates among children are high and child labour is reportedly on the decline.

What then is the need of the hour for our youngest citizens? As the Day Against Cruelty to Children clearly proves, what our future citizens need urgently are safe, child-friendly spaces where they would be protected from physical, mental, verbal and sexual abuse. Infants and toddlers need more safe creches and baby-minding centres run by trained child-loving minders, to protect them from physical or sexual abuse.

Schools need trained counsellors and psychologists for children who suffer from communication gaps with their parents, so they don’t resort to drastic methods of solving them. We need to bring back family courts to help resolve domestic problems in an amicable way so that the child grows up with both parents. Broken families where children are deprived of close contact with one of their parents is also a form of cruelty against children.

While child trafficking is negligible in this country, child prostitution continues unabated, with underaged children selling their bodies in exchange for baubles, both in the city and outside, being found almost on a daily basis. Finding them alternative means of livelihood, or sending them back to school, is vital to ensure they lead a normal life like other children. We also need to amend, stiffen and implement existing laws against child cruelty.

Finally, organising just one day to protest against cruelty to children is simply not enough. We need to keep cruelty to children in the limelight everyday, every hour, every minute. It takes only that much of time for them to be abandoned, killed, tortured or sexually molested.

As a nation of child lovers, hopefully, 2014 will witness a dramatic social transformation which will result in all those who are in the habit of engaging in cruel practices against children, to abandon them once and for all.