Child labourers participate in the Geneva meet

The Asian Age, in its Bangalore edition datelined June 2, 1999, reported on another first for India. The government arranged for three working children to be invited to the Geneva meet to participate in the hearing by a committee of the UN Commission on the Rights of Children.

The trip, the paper's correspondent G. Anuradha reported, was the culmination of a three-year effort by CWC in association with other NGOs in the country.

With this, the paper reported, India becomes the first country in the world to have children invited to defend their report on their rights. The report itself is an unprecedented exercise where children themselves prepared and submitted it before the world body.

What is moving is that the report was compiled by children from the lowest socio-economic strata of various states. They came together to relate their experiences and gave suggestions on their rights.

The three youngsters - 12-year-old Ratnakar Maaji, a cowherd from Orissa, 14-year-old Jeyashankar from Tamil Nadu, a farm worker, and 16-year-old Girish of Karnataka who runs his own automobile workshop - were housed in CWC's headquarters in Bangalore before leaving for Geneva. They were accompanied by three adults from different NGOs who were to be their interpreters.

According to Ms. Kavita Ratna, CWC's Director, India is also the first country to submit seven other reports from different agencies, besides a report from the government. India, which joined the UN Convention represented by 189 countries in 1992, submitted its official report in 1997.

But it was the report prepared by a team of five children under the guidance of CWC that evoked keen interest in the 10-member UN Committee which reviews the reports, said Ms. Ratna, who has been co-ordinating with the committee. The children postponed submission of their report so that they could also comment on the government's official report, she said. The children's observations will be conveyed to the Indian Government. Though the UN committee's directions are not legally binding, the government will be morally obliged to adopt the suggestions, Ms. Ratna said.

Work on the children's report, which is a brainchild of CWC, started in 1995 with five teams from different regions of India meeting at intervals to discuss children's rights. The teams from Karnataka (rural and urban), Tamil Nadu, Mumbai, Delhi and Orissa finally put forth their viewpoints and experiences which were translated by the CWC team and compiled into a report.

Unconventional in format, the 82-page report touches on the different Articles of the Indian Constitution on the rights of children and rips apart the generalisations that have taken children's rights for granted.


One such example, The Asian Age says, is Article 24 which provides for health and health services. As the children put it: "The government claims that providing health services is one of its primary duties. But children on the street take bath in filthy water. This leads to disease." They also castigated the government for not setting any deadline to fulfil its obligations.

The remarkably articulate children minced no words while criticising the government for its lackadaisical attitude towards its programmes for children. The benefits of such programmes, they said, never reached them. Girish, the most perceptive child of the team, said: "We have looked at the report submitted by the Government of India in 1997 and we find it downright untrue."

Asked by the paper if he was confident that their efforts would bear fruit at the Geneva convention, he riposted: "Why not? With organisations like Bhima Sangha which has been formed and is run by working children, we have succeeded in making village panchayats heads take keen interest in child-related problems. Hence we're sure it will work at the government level if they involved children and parents actively in their programmes."