Realizing Human Rights: Combating Violence Against Children

Violence Against Children Essay: Making Human Rights Real - “It is easy to bring strong children than to mend broken adults”

Did you know that every person in the world has human rights? Even children have rights. Human rights are things that every person should have to be able to live a good life with respect and security. Every person in the whole world has these rights because each of us is born equal. Because children are young and sometimes weak, that’s why they need special protection so that they can enjoy their human rights. It’s for this reason that children’s human rights have been written in a special document called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child, 1989. So what are these human rights in the Convention? The author wants to discuss some of the rights present in the convention.

• Well the right to life means, every child’s life should be protected. Children have the right to live in a clean and safe environment with proper care and supervision by their parents or by other adults.
• The right to education means that every child must receive quality instruction so that they are able to read, write and count and develop their mental and physical abilities so they can reach their full potential as adults.
• The right to food means that every child must have enough healthy food so they have strong and healthy bodies.
• The right to health means that children must be allowed to grow in a safe clean environment so they can become healthy adults.
• The right to water means children have the right to safe drinking water.
• The right to identity means every child must be officially recognised as a human being with human rights.
• The right to protection is the right to live in a secure and caring environment which keeps the child safe. Each child has a right to protected from violence, physical or mental abuse, exploitation and slavery.

But are we able to achieve all the above mentioned rights? The answer is no. We can say that children are the epicentre of violence and exploitation. According to Faucault, society is all about docility. In all types of violence and exploitation against children one can see the principle of docility and docile bodies.

The abuse and the neglect of children is an awkward discussion to have. It raises emotions in us and it raises particularly important questions about who we are and how we relate to each other. And one of those questions that the author is going to put in this article is, ‘Is there a better way to protect and nurture our children?’ and the proposal that the author is going to discuss in response to that question is ‘we need to revitalise our community involvement so that everyone plays a part in raising them’ and by doing so that will enable us to build strong children rather than mending broken adult. Our children are precious. They are part of us. They are our present, they are our future. They share the inalienable rights of all of us as citizens and we share a collective responsibility for nurturing them and building them into good citizens. Protecting children is actually everybody’s business. Child abuse and neglect appears in many different forms and it has incredible impacts upon people. The importance of it in addressing it can’t be overstated. The impacts upon children include their health. Secondly their well being is impacted. Thirdly children’s competence is impacted and finally their confidence.

Most importantly maltreatment of children is corrosive to their relationships and that can follow them their whole life. It is interesting when you talk to children who have been abused and neglected. They don’t necessarily want to sever the relationship with their family. What they always want is for the abuse or the neglect to stop and that is an important part to remember.

Now a question arises that what can be a solution? How violence against children can be prevented? Author believes that to prevent violence against children we have to work from the scratch.

Pre-school education, life skill trainings, reducing alcohol availability through the enactment and enforcement of liquor licensing laws and restricting access to firearms are some solutions which can change the scenario. We have to build a powerful web of care that enables people to access the sort of help they need when they really need it. Finally in the organisational level, there are lots of community organisations that provide everyday social care, sporting clubs, and recreations. These are the sort of institutional responses that help people connect with the sort of help they needed and also help to connect the informal care with the formal care.

But the most important thing is to make people understand that we are no one to kill budding dreams of these little children. There is a better way to care and nurture for our children as Mahatma Gandhi said “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”.

The author wants to say that You can play a part here by revitalizing our community involvement and recognising that everyone plays a part in raising our children.