Child Rights: History, Facts & How to Protect Them?

Child rights recognize the fundamental human rights and protections that should be guaranteed to all children as vulnerable members of society. They constitute civil, political, economic, social and cultural entitlements needed to nurture the full potential of every child. Protecting and promoting the importance of child rights ensures every child's well-being and future prospects are safeguarded.

What Are Child Rights?

Child rights are a set of universal entitlements, protections and freedoms legally granted to all children under 18. They are a specific subsection of overall human rights catering to children's distinct needs and best interests during their critical growing years.

Some of the key rights and protections guaranteed to children through domestic and international laws include:

• Right to life, survival, and development
• Right to identity and nationality from birth
• Right to an adequate standard of living, including nutrition, shelter, healthcare
• Right to be protected from abuse, harm, neglect, physical/mental violence
• Right to equal treatment irrespective of race, gender, language, religion, community

Importance of Child Rights

India has the largest child population in the world, with over 431 million children, as per the latest census data. (Source: UNICEF, 2023). Ensuring their well-being through child rights becomes even more crucial with such a large number.

This economic progress is a positive step. However, significant inequalities based on gender, caste, class, and religion still exist. This results in millions of children facing challenges like malnutrition, child marriage, and child labour. 

Whereas, child rights ensure that every child is treated equally and has the chance to be safe, free, and grow up well. When children have these rights, it helps reduce poverty and supports long-lasting growth for everyone.

How to Protect Child Rights in India?

While there has been progress in raising social awareness, improving legislation, and encouraging action to eliminate child violence, abuse, and exploitation, more work remains to be done to ensure survivors and their families receive sensitive, timely, and efficient protection and services. 

Here are some ways that you can protect child rights in India:

1. Education & Awareness

A key priority is implementing mandatory awareness programs on child rights across school curriculums from the early stages of education. This needs to be supplemented by mass education campaigns through media, especially regional media, focused on eliminating prevailing practices that violate child rights, like child marriage and hazardous child labour.

2. Promote the Importance of Child Health

Expanding immunisation coverage and tackling malnutrition must be urgently tackled through flagship government health programs such as the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS) and public health infrastructure improvements to enable healthy physical and cognitive growth. 

This includes improving access to clean drinking water, sanitation facilities and healthcare infrastructure, especially in rural areas. An equity lens has to be taken to address systemic disadvantages that currently exclude vulnerable communities and girls from accessing quality healthcare resources.

3. Avoiding Child Labour

Eradicating child labour requires a three-pronged approach - strict ban and penalties against employment of children below 14 years, rigorous and regular monitoring of hazardous industries like mining, fireworks, glass manufacturing, etc., known for employing children, and finally, rehabilitation programs providing counselling, transitional education and vocational skill training to rescued child workers for them to have better prospects. Within enforcement, issues like child trafficking for labour also have to be severely penalised.

4. Child Protection Services

Having an accessible local child rights protection ecosystem is vital for assisting children facing abandonment, violence, trafficking, substance abuse and other scenarios of adversity. This means having well-funded and rigorously trained protection officers in every block/taluka to assist vulnerable children. It also means expanding child helplines, shelters and counselling services catering to issues children face like sexual abuse, child marriage, and unsafe migration. 

5. NGO and Civil Society Involvement

NGO partnerships in delivering government welfare schemes can enable wider reach and innovation. Leading child rights NGO such as CRY India play an invaluable role through initiatives enabling access to education, medicines, and food for underprivileged children while eliminating child labour, child marriage and other harms impeding development.

Such NGOs drive critical work that the state and communities cannot fulfil alone. Hence, encouraging NGO activism through public interest litigations can highlight systemic gaps needing urgent policy and legislative reform in the child protection system.

6. Legal Frameworks

At the fundamental level, all the laws and rights protecting children, such as the right to education and the prohibition of child marriage, must be enforced consistently and without any influence from social pressures or biases. Simultaneously, inconsistencies between central and state-level regulations must be identified and harmonized with child rights-based legal principles, resolving any conflicts or uncertainties in interpretation.

How Does CRY India Work Towards Protecting Child Rights?

CRY India works extensively across the spheres of education, healthcare, safety and empowerment to protect child rights across India. We currently operate in 19 states with 102 project partners at the grassroots level, focusing on critical child rights issues like education, safety & protection, health & nutrition, and child participation. Our approach integrates efforts from families, communities, children themselves, the public, and government bodies, to tackle critical child rights issues.

As highlighted in a brief on empowering the girl child, CRY India implements comprehensive education initiatives and healthcare advocacy for girls while campaigning against early child marriages. It engages communities to transform mindsets and promotes gender equality. CRY India work towards creating an environment where children can grow, learn, and thrive while having their rights protected and upheld.

Conclusion

Every child deserves to be treated fairly, equitably, and with the utmost decency, regardless of their differences. They have the same basic rights regardless of their race, colour, caste, creed, language, ethnicity, or gender. 

Therefore, the country, its citizens, and the government must come together and speak out against any atrocities committed against children. Only by ending child suffering and fostering their holistic well-being can India ensure a secure future.