Guest Lecture on Addressing Child Rights: Issues and Concerns

A guest lecture was organized on “Addressing Child Rights Issues and Concerns” for the students of M Sc Home Science (HD)  and B.Sc H.Sc on 5th October, 2016 by M.Sc H.Sc (Human Development) Department. The speaker was Ms. Kavita Srivastava, who is presently the President of the Rajasthan branch of PUCL, a Human Rights national orgasnization. She has worked with Institute of Developmental Studies as an associate fellow in Women studies. She has also been a visiting fellow at IDS SUSSEX, UK. She has been involved in the draft making of many landmark policies such as POCSO, RTI, PWDVA. She has also been nominated for 100 women Nobel Peace Prize and awarded with National Prize for Women Empowerment in 2006.

She talked about the child rights from the women movement approach. The major issue which she addressed was the issue of defining a child in Indian laws.  The age of the child in Indian laws varies from one law to another. In many laws such as POCSO, JJ Act, Child Marriage Act the ‘child’ is defined a person below 18 years of age. Even in political context, a person gets the voting right after the age of 18 years in India. But when we come to Child Labor Law, the ‘child’ is defined as any person below 14 years. Furthermore, she explained the consequences at the grass root level in the country.  While discussing this major issue of age she also discussed many laws related to child and women in India.

Recent amendment in POCSO, JJ Act, Child Marriage act was discussed by her in brief. She also recommended few changes which should be done in these laws to bring uniformity in legal system dealing with women and children as these laws are interrelated.

Ms Kavita Srivastava also emphasized on the need of awareness of our rights because most of the children and women are not aware of their rights and they are suffering from the problems. She explained that how NGOs working for child rights create awareness in the community and how it delivers the massage to the concerned authority from the grass root level.

In the discussion session few students asked about how they can contribute in making the people aware of their rights. In the end, she asked the students to contribute their free time in generating awareness in the community by joining hands with the local NGOs working in the community.

Notice: