Emergency and global movement for children

By DR GOPAL KRISHNA SIWAKOTI

The tragic circumstances surrounding the destruction of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon unfolded around us resulting in a global state of emergency and nothing will ever be the same. The Special Session of the UN on Children was the first casualty of the aviation attacks. It was suspended temporarily, and now will be reconvened in May 2002. Within the past decade, as discussions began concerning the convening of the Special Session on children, several other new emergency situations have evolved throughout the globe. Blending the specificity of the Summit document with addressing the following contemporary issues of emergency concern could provide a useful operational framework grounded in the responsibility and accountability of a
home government and the international community.

First emergency: The internal armed conflict is on the rise in every corner of the globe. This siphons scarce resources meant for primary education, vaccination, nutrition and housing for security purpose. Also children receive the lowest priority in safety, security, relief and rebuilding the war-torn society. Often they are abused and neglected and are deprived of humanitarian support. No child ever started a war. Yet every time a war breaks out, children as the most vulnerable members of society suffer the worst. Some lose their lives. Some lose beloved family members. The international community has long recognized that children have no place in wars, yet children are still victimised. Nepal is not an exception to the escalating crisis. Many children are even forced to fight in the conflict. When we think of war crimes, we tend to forget crimes against children. The rehabilitation and reintegration of children is often neglected and has never been the central issue to peace-building process.

Second emergency: Children are the victims of environmental emergencies like global warming and the water crisis that take their greatest toll on children. In Nepal, statistics show that water-borne diseases and a lack of safe water cause the preventable deaths and illnesses of thousands of children. We must preserve our natural resources even as we use them, to ensure our children’s rights to a healthy environment. All children must enjoy the highest attainable standard of health, especially through sanitation, proper housing and a safe and healthy environment. Children are dying of measles and tetanus, both of which can be prevented with a simple immunization. To address this and to try to save newborn lives, we must begin caring for children as early as possible.

Third emergency: When no effort is made to allow disabled children equal access to opportunity, that too is a state of emergency. Whenever a child, anywhere, is made to feel that he or she is inferior to other children, that is not only a discrimination but a grave humanitarian crisis. Children must be taught to be tolerant and live without fear or hate or prejudice. We must leave no child out. The government including individuals, non-governmental organisations, religious groups, the private sector, and children and adolescents themselves must meet their obligations to children and young people.

Fourth emergency: Children and adolescents and their families must be protected from the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS. The epidemic deprives children of their most basic rights. All children have the right to the healthiest possible start in life. The death of the mother jeopardizes the life of the child. Children whose mothers have died are more likely to die themselves before their second birthday. Children must know how to help prevent illness and poor health, and follow the principles of good hygiene. Every child has the right to grow up in a safe and nurturing environment. Children rely on adults for protection and guidance. So when adults harm and exploit children, it is the most egregious betrayal of trust imaginable. Whether in the home, school, streets, or workplace, a child should never be subject to harm. The violence and abuse that children suffer must be stopped.

Fifth emergency: The use of child soldiers is nothing new to this region and Nepal cannot be seen in isolation. The mobilisation and recruiting of under age youngster to fight in wars, is a cruel form of exploitation of children. Children are mobilised deliberately, their spirit fired to bear arms and undergo military training, and they are actually sent to the battle fronts. In Nepal, reports have revealed that children of the age of as low as 10 are forced to join the rebel groups and use artillery and gun. Although Article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child limits the age of 15 for recruitment, but in practice, much younger children are used as soldiers and messengers to the detriment of their mental and physical health and safety.

Sixth emergency: The problem of child prostitution in the form of sex labour is rampant in the country and is becoming even more emergency with the spread of AIDS. Although poverty is often linked with child prostitution, it cannot be seen as the sole cause. The fact that parents are at times willing to sell their children into this trade indicates a deeper malaise in the society, namely the treatment of people as commodities for the purpose of consumerism, and the decline of ethics and disintegration of the family system. The scenario is intricately linked with supply and demand factors. The other side of the coin is that there is systematic and individual criminality, coupled with the corruption of law-enforcement officials, all of whom profit from prostitution. At the very worst, children are abducted, drugged and coerced by gangs and syndicates into forced prostitution both locally and across frontiers.

Seventh emergency: Trafficking in children is an alarming state of emergency in Nepal. Traffickers primarily target women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by poverty, the lack of access to education, chronic unemployment, discrimination, and the lack of economic opportunities. Traffickers lure women and girls into their networks through false promises of decent working conditions at relatively good pay as nannies, maids, dancers, factory workers, restaurant workers, sales clerks, or models. Traffickers also buy children from poor families and sell them into prostitution or into various types of forced or bonded labour.

Eighth emergency: Child portering is another state of emergency related to children and young people. A myth seems to have been created that porters are super-human. The massive weights the child porters carry, the cold and the high altitudes, heat and the dust are nothing to them. This is a madness. Child porters believe they are simply seen as beasts of burden. They suffer humiliation upon humiliation and are treated as less than human. In many instances, the way the child porters are treated amounts to modern slavery. Child porters are usually from poverty-stricken families. They are forced to work without insurance, without proper clothing and for very few wages. They get next to nothing if they are injured or disabled while working. It is time to change. Children must be emancipated from this unfair and inhumane workload.

Global Movement for Children (GMC) The new wave of GMC is launched as an accumulation of people and organisations around the world dedicated to promoting the rights of the child and to fight against the above emergencies. The GMC is a force for change, calling for people throughout the world to take action against these and other emergencies. We all have a role to play — leaders and citizens, public and private organisations, children and young people.

The core of the GMC will be adults and children, working together. It will not be enough for adults to change the world for children — they must change the world with children. The GMC realises that the decisions it makes will affect children’s lives. Children, therefore, must participate in every step of the decision-making processes. Through this campaign, children and adults from around the world are able to speak out on ten imperative actions which must be undertaken in order to improve the lives of children. ‘Say Yes for Children’ is continuing with renewed energy.

The GMC calls on everyone, everywhere, to do as much as possible, in their own time and their own way, for children. In every child who comes into the world, the hopes and dreams of the human race are born anew. For the world has the knowledge, the resources and the legal imperatives to give every child the best possible start in life, in a family environment that offers the love, the care and the nurturing that children need to grow, to learn and to develop to the fullest.

Au revoir

By DAMARU LAL BHANDARI

Parting in life is a sad phenomenon. I for one have realised this rather late in my life or so it seems. As someone who has thus far worked with nearly six employers, I never really felt a tinge of sadness on giving up the job in huff myself. More on it later, though.

I have walked out of job at the drop of a hat. Smacks of human foibles alright but that gave me a sense of deja vu that I have worked hard but failed to drive home my point of view when it mattered most. But, as I have learned the hard way, it is always good to have patience, which, incidentally, seems to be a missing link in my life. The first time I resigned out of job in a huff was in 1982, a year when I was still an undergraduate and was moonlighting in a firm in what was still Bombay. I have done so six times since then, with the latest instances having taken place on December 31.

In fact, my thus far peripatetic career has been marred by instances of giving up the moment things don’t work out to my liking. Or said conversely, I have far little patience and, most important of all, strategy.

Obviously, my innings in Kathmandu has not been much different. In fact, the time has come when I am being looked at as a rolling stone. Many of my well-wishers and friends have warned me to have patience and stick to one newspaper. It is equally true that people have all along reposed faith in me, despite my inclination to go missing with the flip of a finger.

The way I am born I do not think problems, which crop in offices can be talked up, especially in situation when I and the rest of the colleagues fail to see things in the same light. This probably is what drives me to the extreme, which culminates in myself spurned out of the vortex.

Which brings to the fore the life of a man who singularly enjoys the reputation of staying put over the years. He not only stayed put but he invariably saw to it that no matter who come and go out in huff like myself, The Kathmandu Post and those associated with it remain absolutely unaffected.

In what comes as inspiration to me, Mr Shyam Bahadur KC - who was Shyam Sir to one and all and retired from the post of its longest serving editor a few days ago - is the very personification of a resistless wave. A coolest guy who is also highly quick-witted occupied the hottest chair with elan.

His greatness, meanwhile, is his evenhanded behaviour. There are moments in the life of a man when he or she ends up courting one person or the other, which invariably leads to one’s downfall in adverse conditions. This can also upset the applecart. But he was eminently capable of ruling out just that. To this extent, whoever is thrown into a bond with him will never regret the acquaintance.

As someone who had worked as a member of his editorial team earlier on too, I was disheartened to hear that he was about to call it a day. But as they say, tears well up somewhere deep down in the lachrymal gland all on their own when one realises the irreversibility of it all. The one who did not bother for the next meal while walking out of job could not just restrain the lump in the throat. Wish you au revoir, Shyam Sir.

The World Assembly on ageing

By PREM LAL CHITRAKAR

The five day second World Assembly on Ageing concluded on April 12, 2002 in Madrid. This Assembly was organized as a follow-up to respond to the opportunities and challenges of rapidly increasing aged people all over the world. The first World Assembly on Ageing was held in Vienna, Austria in 1982. It was two decades before the Vienna Assembly that the voices of the older people were discussed in depth by the participating government representatives and the NGOs working in such fields. At the end, a Vienna International Plan of Action was adopted by the developing countries to promote the well being of the aged people. Nepal, however, did not attend the Vienna Assembly on Ageing.

For the first time, Nepal sent its representatives to attend the second World Assembly. This should, indeed, be considered as an opportunity to know and learn the basic issues related to ageing people raised by the participating countries of the world.

One of the objectives of the second World Assembly was to build a society for all ages. As of now to a certain extent, the Nepalese society has been structured or sustaining in line with building a society for all ages. This has, as a concept as well as process, been a way of life in our society. If the Nepalese delegation had highlighted how the Nepalese have been living based on building a society for all ages it would have been one of the major contributions to the second World Assembly. The Nepalese delegation could have also recommended the World Assembly for undertaking a special study by an international academics and professional practitioners of gerontology on how best to address the issues of individual and ageing population and how well the elders in this country have been treated and honoured.

The increasing aged population in this country has been affecting several areas of our life. Such areas include problems of health and health care facilities, family composition, income and spending, living arrangements, housing and migration to name a few, owing to the changing value system of Nepalese society in recent years.

Problems of increasing aged people have not only been caused by the increasing figures but also raise the uncertainty over the way such aged people are being taken care of by the members of a family — the foundation of solidarity of the Nepalese society of the past.

Similarly, several old age homes have also been built in this country in recent years, especially to rehabilitate the elderly people for better welfare, healthcare and at the same time engage them in some sort of creative undertaking so that they can improve their livings. However, the facilities and other infrastructures developed and available at these old age homes built so far are very limited.

The Nepalese society is being restructured by many factors in recent years. Among the most important ones that have been responsible for this are globalisation, liberalisation, constant change in value system, rapid urbanisation and increasing number of aged people. Under such situations, how other countries have been tackling such problems could be a good lesson for this country.

Ageing has, in fact, been a cyclical process. All the people of the world, whether he or she is rich or poor, educated or uneducated, have to pass through this cyclical process in their life time irrespective of their present state of strength or merit or weakness.

Similarly, it is also a human nature that aged people have been aspiring to live in a suitable or congenial environment — where they are taken proper care of, well nourished and have adequate latitude in their development to undertake in some creative undertaking even at their old age. So the progress made and the obstacles encountered in the implementation of the first Plan of Action adopted in Vienna will be very useful for Nepal. The United Nations (UN) had asked the participating countries to address the sever issues in Vienna: health and nutritions of older people, their safety, habitat and environment, family, social wellbeing, income security, employment and education.

Recently, the government has adopted a new comprehensive policy on senior citizens with an objective of tapping their skills, knowledge, and experiences in different areas as well as to ensure their social and economic wellbeing so that they can live a life with dignity and honor in our society. The new policy on senior citizens adopted by the government to a certain extent is also similar to UN principles. But how to implement these policies remains unclear. The outcome of the reviews of the Plan of Action is very important while conceiving new strategic options for the benefit of the elders.

Currently, the National Planning Commission is preparing for the Tenth Five Year Plan. One of the areas which are to be well-prepared is how the issues related to aged people can be well addressed. The Plan of Action adopted by the Madrid Assembly is to bring about changes in attitude, policy and practice at all levels in all sectors of the economy. Similarly, the Plan of Action has also been streamlined and developed in meeting the needs of the aged people of the world in this century. The Plan of Action has been developed not merely to meeting the needs of the aged people but they have also been framed in harnessing the enormous potential of the aged people. Therefore the Plan of Action, adopted in Madrid is very useful for preparing the Tenth Five Year Plan.

Nepal not only failed to participate in the first Vienna Assembly but also failed to implement the Vienna International Plan of Action on Ageing. For Nepal it is, therefore, necessary to adopt and revise the well-articulated Plan of Action adopted in Madrid and implement the most useful parts in the years to come. Nepal should also receive resources to implement the Madrid Plan of Action and develop the much needed infrastructure for the well being of the aged people in this country.