 | More World Vision Links
|
|
Remote villages learn about child rights
By Anthony Kofi Odoom on 21 Aug 2007
Many children in Ghana face severe abuse of their basic Human Rights by people they are supposed to trust and love. Some have been sexually abused, trafficked to lands alien to them and are made to labour in conditions that can best be described as inhuman.
As one response, 37 primary school children have just attended a World Vision workshop, educating them on their basic human rights. The children, from the most remote villages where child abuse is very common, travelled to the district capital, Effiduase, where the Sekyere East Area Development Programme (ADP) office is situated, about five hours' drive north of Accra, the capital, to attend the workshop.
The workshop advocacted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), namely: awareness creation, community mobilisation, policy formulation and policy implementation.
The two main facilitators who took the children through the workshop were Jane Kwao-Sarbah, World Vision Africa Regional Adviser on Children Rights, and Stella Nkrumah-Ababio, Child Rights Co-ordinator for World Vision Ghana.
The children were assisted to form committees which will advocate on key child protection concerns identified through a child rights survey carried out in Sekyere East District in 2005. The children's committees will then advise World Vision Ghana Sekyere East ADP on monthly activities to remedy the situation.
Six children's committees will represent the six zones of the ADP. The children also elected a set of executives - a president, vice president, secretary and organising secretary - in each of the six zones of the ADP.
Their district-level executives were democratically elected by the group of children themselves through a very transparent and exciting process.
They were divided into four groups. The first group were children with balloons tied on their legs, signifying the very precious rights of the children which are to be protected and not be destroyed). The second group acted as abusers, representing people in communities who are always trying to destroy the rights of children.
The third group of children was asked to protect the balloons tied on the first group, representing people in the communities who protect the rights of the children (good citizens a nation needs such as good parents, security people, community leaders and children themselves).
The last group the children were the observers, the people in a community who have the ability to assist children but would not. The children learned that the observers appeared to not want to help children, because they did nothing.
"We learned that we have four main rights to protect. They are survival rights, development rights, protection rights and participation rights. These rights go with responsibilities and children need to be responsible and respect our parents. We also thank World Vision for bringing us all the way from different villages to open our eyes to the realities of children’s rights," said the district children's president elected at the workshop.
| Current Attachments: |
| There are no attachments on this document. |
|
|