Jharkhand Police will launch a three-month long drive —’END violence against children’ — against sexual abuse of children in the State on Friday. The campaign will be led by Jharkhand Police and UNICEF with support of the departments of Human Resource Development and Social Welfare and JHAlSA. The slogan of the campaign is ‘Ab Aur Nahin. Mat Chupao, Aawaz Uthao’--coined to encourage reporting of cases of sexual abuse of children
On the occasion, Additional DGP SN Pradhan said, “Children are being violated and abused physically, sexually and emotionally. Research shows children are being abused in homes and outside and especially by those they know. These abusers are persons in authority and persons in trust. There is a need to break this ‘culture’ of silence, rather the ‘conspiracy’ of silence.”
During the three-month long campaign, 65-lakh children in all 40,000 schools will be covered. The activities include sessions in schools on END violence against children across the State; legal awareness camps in 10 schools each in all 24 districts with support from JHAlSA; and capacity building programmes on child protection laws and cyber-crime for paralegal volunteers and legal aid lawyers. Besides, capacity building program for senior police officers on key legislations for protection of children from violence; and six divisional level workshops with adolescents have also been planned. A mobile campaign will run for two weeks to reach out to adolescent girls groups, parents, community members etc. “Violence against children happens everywhere, every day. But it remains invisible and most cases are not reported,” said Chief UNICEF Jharkhand, Job Zachariah.
Zachariah suggested six strategies to prevent violence against children which included--educating parents and teachers on positive disciplining, educating children on abuse and how to protect themselves, changing social attitudes on violence against children and implementing laws relating to protection of children. The campaign has been designed to inculcate no tolerance for crime against children and increase participation of children in reporting such matter which has not been very encouraging in Jharkhand’s case. The stake holders of the campaign emphasised on educating children to help them understand offensive behaviours to prevent incidents of child sex abuse.
“There should be ‘zero tolerance’ for violence against boys and girls. Studies show children from all economic and social strata and both in rural and urban areas are victims of violence and abuse which negatively impacts their physical and mental health. A stigma is attached to talking about this issue in society. Training and sensitization for all stakeholders along with a structured response mechanism is needed. Adolescents too need to be made aware as to how to respond and prevent these situations. We must all come together to break the silence and raise our voice,” said IG CID, Sampat Meena.
The programme was attended by Vineet Kumar of Cyber Peace Foundation; Smita Sharma of Mahila Samakhya and Child Protection Officer, UNICEF, Priti Srivastava among others.