Call for greater push to child rights

Hyderabad: The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) Dept of MCJ, conducted a two-day workshop, 'The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),' on November 15-16.

The UNICEF India, who has been working towards child rights over the past several years, conducted this programme in the campus to make journalism students responsible and sensitive towards the rights of children.

These were the views expressed by Sonia Sarkar, Communication Officer (Media), UNICEF India, on the second day of the Workshop. As part of the Global Rights Act, healthy media could help governments in taking steps towards providing social and educational rights to the children in India, she added further.

The workshop was conducted as part of the 30 years of CRC celebrations and in continuance with UNICEF's capacity building initiatives to instill the child's rights' perspective in reporting among the academic and budding journalists.

Professor Md Fariyad, Dept of MCJ, MANUU, while opening the discussion on the second day, said that UNICEF introduced tenets of the Child Rights Convention, and gave a brief explanation about the 54 articles under CRC with an emphasis on Youth Voices and Child Participation.

Eminent journalist Dr M H Ghazali spoke about 'Children's Participation in Child Rights.' He presented short films highlighting the dropout rates of children in India and later held a discussion with the participants regarding the message that emerged from videos.