Children’s Sad Story

ONE of the barometres to gauge how a nation is doing in general public welfare is certainly the way it treats its children. Every nation has to take care as best as it can of its children not only because they are the future pillars of society, but because they are the most vulnerable lot among the sections of the population. A nation cannot legitimately boast of much, no matter how well it is doing on some other aspects of national life, if it does not protect and nurture its children well. Nepalese children are an unfortunate lot. Their rights are trampled left and right. They have long been the victims in many respects engendered by poverty, callousness and apathy. Nepalese children carry a heavy load of injustices of their tiny shoulders: child labour, child marriage, girl trafficking, discrimination between sons and daughters, sexual abuse of children and so on. A recent report on the status of child rights in Nepal done by an NGO again confirm that unless a great deal of efforts are made sincerely, children in Nepal will continue to suffer from the above injustices. The survey found out that both the nature and events of violence against children have increased in the year 2000. They have been victims of widespread violence and torture at homes, in schools and at workplaces. That is violence against the future of Nepal.

As if Nepalese children did not face enough number of situations where they could easily be the victims of violence, a growing number of them are caught now in the ugly vortex of the Maoist insurgency. Some 57 children have lost their lives while hundreds of others have turned orphans during the last five years due to this violence. Thousands of children have been displaced from the insurgency-affected districts. The only little consolation in the rather bleak scenario regarding children, which the report points out, is that child illiteracy and infant mortality rates have gradually fallen. But these somewhat positive indicators in no way comper sate for the overall deterioration in the circumstances in which children live. Obviously what is being done is not enough. If child rights in the country is to be protected and promoted, the agencies responsible for formulating policies and implementing them have to coordinate better and do much, much more.

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