Representatives from 12 districts’ child rights forums are participating in a three-day experience sharing meeting starting from May 21. The meeting is being organised by Child Rights Observatory in Bhopal. Nirmala Buch, president CROMP at the start of the workshop said, “It is important that we not only create awareness on the challenges being faced by children like child marriage, violence against children and issues of education but we need to collate data and evidence which so that we can advocate strongly for them.”
Anil Gulati Communication Specialist UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh said that it was important that civil society was empowered to speak for child rights and needed to bring children first in discourse in society. Emphasising the importance of advocacy, he said, “When we as civil society advocate for children need to have proper evidence and documentation of the issues which we are raising and bringing attention of larger public.” He said there was strong need to create opportunities for voices of children to be heard by decision makers and people who make policies for children.
District child rights forum shared their experience about the challenges being faced by children at ground, be it lack of sanitation facilities, issues of punishment among children, quality of education, children working in hazardous situations and prevalent violence among children and need to create opportunities for hearing voices of children. Representatives from Umaria, Gwalior, Rewa, Tikamgarh, Singruali, Chhindwara, Rajgarh, Harda, Vidisha, Raisen, Sheopur and Satna Districts child rights forum participated in the same.