Wednesday, November 21, 2007

CM for better care of poor children

The International Child Rights Day was observed on Tuesday with the state government, in collaboration with Unicef, releasing the "Convention on the Rights of the Child" (CRC) Report, 2007 for Bihar entitled "Sankalp".

Releasing the report, CM Nitish Kumar laid stress on taking care of children of disadvantaged sections with love and dignity. He said the agencies should expand their child rights campaign to cover more areas and population. He informed the gathering that the government has initiated all inclusive schemes to cover all social strata and giving more emphasis on girl children for their education, training and health.

On this occasion, welfare minister Rameshwar Paswan, social welfare secretary Vijay Prakash and Unicef representative Vijayraj Bhandari also spoke.

The Child Rights Day is a day of worldwide fraternity and solidarity between children and stakeholders promoting welfare of world's children. On this day in 1959, the UN General Assembly had adopted the Declaration of Rights of the Child and later held a Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

In order to ensure a broad-based dialogue between the state government departments, civil society members and child rights organisation, the department of social welfare was called upon to act as a nodal agency for coordination.

Bihar, in the last few years, has made significant progress in the implementation of various programmes. It even initiated measures which had a lasting positive impact on child rights in the state. Large-scale appointment of teachers, making provisions for school uniforms for the underprivileged and improvement in school infrastructure are indicators of the larger vision that the state has for its children.

The Unicef is running Apna Ghar for the orphans and street children. One such child, Sonu, spoke on the occasion in English and Hindi. This 14-year-old boy of class V said he learnt about rights and also the right to live, learn and study. The children also presented a song on the occasion.

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