Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram   

Bill on national panel for children criticised

By C. Maya

Thiruvananthapuram Dec. 20. The proposed National Commission for Children Bill 2003, presented before the Lok Sabha recently by the Union Minister for Human Resources Development, Murali Manohar Joshi, has come in for criticism from child rights activists here who have described the Bill as `regressive' and against the spirit of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (CRC).

Says T. Narayanan, general secretary of Balasangham, an organisation working for children and the treasurer of the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare, "The U.N. Convention on Child Rights has been hailed as the last word on what each nation should do to do justice to their children and it has been the foundation of many of our subsequent laws, such as the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000. However, the Bill does not even have a mention of the Convention."

In its present form, the Bill has no teeth as it does not provide for any statutory powers for the proposed National Commission and hence should be reviewed and re-worked upon, he says.

Apart from the fact that the Bill is not keeping with the provisions of the U.N. Convention, it does not even define who constitutes a child or what his/her rights and entitlements are or what is the punishment to be given to those found guilty of exploiting a child.

In fact, nothing about the `rights' of a child figure in the Bill. "Various laws passed by the Centre and States do not concur on the definition of a child, what their fundamental rights are or what is the protection that should be afforded to them. The Juvenile Justice Act specifies that an individual up to 18 years of age should be considered a child," points out Mr. Narayanan.

The lack of executive or penalising powers for the proposed Commission, as envisaged in the Bill is something that has had the child rights activists up in arms.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee on women and children, which recommended the setting up of a Commission for children, had specified that unlike various other Commissions like the National Commission for Women or the National Human Rights Commission whose powers have much limitations, a Commission for children should have the powers to intervene, order and enforce laws wherever required. However, the present Bill is a far cry from what the Joint Parliamentary Committee had envisaged, it is alleged.

As per the Bill, the commission, consisting of a chairperson and six members, would review the existing laws on children and suggest amendments therein if considered necessary. It would also look into complaints or take suo moto notice of the cases involving violation of constitutional and legal rights of children.

As for its powers, the Bill says that, "the Commission would have the right to monitor the implementation of laws and programmes relating to the survival, welfare and development of children. While investigating any matter, the Commission would have all the powers of a civil court trying a suit and would have the power to summon and enforce attendance of any person and examine him on oath."

Says Philip Parekkat, the director of the Don Bosco Veedu, who works with street children, "Nowhere does the Bill say that the proposed Commission will have the powers to intervene in a situation where the rights of children are affected or that it can punish child offenders. This is worse than the 2001 draft of the same Bill, which had come in for nation-wide criticism from NGOs working in the field."

NGOs have pointed out that the Bill makes no mention of the rights or the protection that should be given to children who are marginalised from society, like working children, street children, children with disabilities or those children living with HIV. There is also no reference to the U.N.'s 1995 Beijing Convention on the girl child.

As the nature of the problems faced by children differs across the country, their solutions also should be placed in the regional context. The Child Welfare Council is in the process of organising a campaign to focus attention on the Bill and to involve all concerned citizens and NGOs in a wide and participatory debate on re-drafting the Bill.

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