Kerala - Kochi   

Children's plea to protect their rights

Special Correspondent

KOCHI: The World Assembly of Children for Human Rights has, in an appeal to `all leaders and grown-ups of the world', reminded them of the massive violation of children's human rights all over the world.

President of the assembly Varsha Narayanan, who is a tenth class student in Kochi, said that a quarter of the children of the world were facing starvation. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, crores of children were being denied the right to live, the right to education and the right to grow up in dignity. Closer home, infanticide and child labour were rampant in India.

Children are the worst victims of wars, conflicts, terrorist acts and social and family tensions, she said.

"On behalf of the children of the world," she said, "I appeal to all the leaders and grown-up men and women to remind themselves that children are the promise of the future, the greatest resource the mankind has."

The Human Rights Initiative (HRI), a collective of lawyers, will on Saturday launch a year-long campaign to protect human rights.

The campaign will focus on abolition of torture of prisoners, holding under-trial prisoners behind bars for over one year, death penalty and child labour. It would emphasise the need to ensure educational opportunities for all and of making education creative, value-oriented and science-based, HRI president E.X. Joseph said.

It would use meetings, symposia, seminars and public-interest litigation to expose human rights violations, he added.

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