Mindless savageries are being inflicted on innocent children in the ongoing orgiastic violence across the country. Seeing the photographs of wailing parents and relatives beside dead and halfburnt children, we try to reconcile ourselves with a cruel reality of the time: we have failed to ensure a secure world for children; no place in this world is safe for them.
Be it SubSaharan Africa, South Asia or Latin America, children are forced into myriad types of hazards. In places the povertystricken children are sucked into fierce armed conflicts, like in South Sudan presently. They are pushed into virtual slavery or forced labour or many ignominious professions in some other regions.
These range from prostitution, drug peddling to gun running. In many developing countries, they are held hostages to illegal financial bargains or used as pawns in political conflicts between parties as has been experienced in Bangladesh since the first week of January. Human rights organisations and civil society groups turn vocal against these barbarities. Newspaper editorials and comments, and TV talk shows shed considerable focus on the issue. We see no change of heart on the part of the politicians targeting children in their violent programmes. They seem to be hellbent on serving their partisan interest.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), Save the Children and many other global charitable organisations have long been engaged in upholding child rights, as well as protecting them from all kinds of hostilities. The Unicef has a charter in place called The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It spells out the obligations of all nations in relation to the proper growth of their children into adulthood. It encompasses all the basic rights to be enjoyed by the children of a country. Although the charter is meant for all the nations, most of the countries in the Third World attach little importance to it.
To uphold the causes of children, the International Children’s Day is observed annually on June 01. In 1925, the World Conference for the Wellbeing of Children in Geneva, Switzerland, proclaimed June 01 to be the special day. Another day dedicated to children’s welfare, called Universal Children’s Day, falls on November 20.
There are also National Children’s Days; the day varies from country to country. The United Nations General Assembly recommended that all countries should fix a Universal Children’s Day on an appropriate day. In most of the least developed countries, the days are observed amid lots of fanfare in the urban centres, with politicians and government functionaries coming up with tall promises for the ‘future of the nation.’ But as dusk approaches, the special day’s message begins fading. Everybody looks forward to a new theme or slogan for the next year. Disappointingly, nothing tangible is seen in the implementation of the muchhyped programmes centring on children’s uplift.
This has been going on year in and year out.
Given the fast deteriorating plight of children worldwide, we, at times, arrive at the gloomy conclusion: the blissful days of childhood are gone for ever. And with them we have bidden farewell to the childhood innocence as well. The hazards facing children vary from region to region. But, nonetheless, they are suffering, be they in highly industrialised countries, economically backward zones, or those torn by protracted conflicts like in Iraq, Palestine, Syria or South Sudan. In many LDCs (least developed countries), they face the double whammy of extreme deprivations and of being caught in political hostilities. In the West, the children are economically wellplaced. Their rights to healthy survival and education are fully protected. But many children in those countries have to pass through the ordeal of living in singleparent families. Parents’ separation or divorce leaves a debilitating impact on their psychological wellbeing.
In many instances, they grow to become selfcentred, nervy or latently violent. The virtual reality created around them by electronic gadgets turns many of them into beings detached from the mainstream life. As a result, a lot of teenagers take to sensual morbidities. The appeal of newer forms of dope becomes irresistible.
In most of the developed countries, the innocence of puberty days as it exists in the traditionbound and poor societies is a strange experience. Due to their being ‘free societies’, they find themselves free of many inhibitions that keep the teenage boys and girls on a tight leash in backward countries when it comes to intimate relations. Sometimes these boygirl ties end up in excesses. By way of a weird turn of behavioural patterns, these excesses sometimes develop into aberrations, which is rampant in western societies. Protection of child rights assumes different proportions here which are altogether different from that of the Third World.
Despite intermittent spells of political violence, Bangladesh has been free of fullscale armed conflict or a civil war since the 1971 Liberation War. Fortunately, the country does not have to carry the stigma of engaging child soldiers in armed confrontations. True, many teenagers took part in the Liberation War, but their numbers were insignificant. However, the practice of luring children to street agitations is almost entwined with our political culture. Human rights and civil society activists keep fighting this antichild practice.
With the state of Bangladeshi children kept in view, the overall picture that emerges is depressing. Although the successive governments remain eloquent with pledges of ensuring a better future for our children, most of the promises go unmet. Except for the Universal Primary Education, no other government programmes could make any impressive achievement. Governmentrun or subsidised primary schools are mushrooming across the country. Keeping pace with it, students are also dropping out especially in the villages. Many of them do not enrol in secondary schools after passing out of their primary level. The general scenario is boys go to crop fields to help their fathers out in agricultural activities. Child marriage is illegal in the country, yet underage girls are rampantly being married off in remote villages.
The condition of urban children of Bangladesh is not much different from that prevailing in the other Third World countries. They are a hapless lot. To speak bluntly, underprivileged children in our big cities are highly neglected, and deprived of almost all the rights enshrined in the UNCRC. To add to their woes, many urban floating children end up being caught in the web of crime and antisocial activities.
In the upper rungs of Bangladesh society, adolescent boys and girls face problems unique to them. Coming from relatively more privileged classes, the hazards facing them involve areas literally strange to their underprivileged counterparts. Theoretically, the former segment’s life revolves round academic feats. As prevailing realities have for some time been revealing, our education sector in general is being customised to brace for a great disaster. The picture that this sector presents before us is already gloomy. Irregularities of myriad types have long been eating away at the vitals of the education system. This applies to both secondary and highersecondary educations. It’s not an overstatement to say that our young boys and girls are being thrust into an uncertain future. Thanks to the vicious cycle of political feuds presently besetting the nation, the young students have potent reasons to feel themselves as national pariahs.
Another alarming aspect of the scenario involving children is they are growing up without enjoying a pure childhood. Unable to resist the tempting eworld in their PCs or smart phones, and finally getting hooked to it, they, unwittingly, dissociate themselves from reality. As boys and girls remain engrossed in the virtual world, their ethereally honeyed childhood passing unnoticed, they become adults overnight.