Sadya Janjua/Ghani Siddique
THE world mark 11 October as “International Day of the Girl Child”, since 2012. It is a reminder that first there is a need for understanding then accepting and finally implementing a system that safeguards children basic rights and amends vulnerabilities to create an environment conducive for healthy nourishment and development of children.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a legally binding international agreement setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child, regardless of their race, religion and abilities. The UNCRC consists of 54 articles that not only outlined children’s rights but also planned ways so that governments around the world may work together to meet children’s basic needs ensuring healthy and prosperous future.
According to UN, it is a state’s responsibility to ensure that every child has basic fundamental rights; which includes; life, survival, development and protection from violence, abuse or neglect, an education that enables children to fulfil their potential, to be raised by or have a relationship with their parents, to express and to be listened to their opinions. In 2000, two optional protocols were added to the UNCRC; first to ensure children under the age of 18 are not forcibly recruited into armed forces and second to prohibit child prostitution, child pornography and sale of children into slavery. In 2011, a third optional protocol was added enabling children to complain directly to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. These articles have been ratified by more than 194 states.
In an estimation reported by Save the Children, (Stop the war on Children published in 2019), around 420 million children, which is approximately one in five children of the world, is affected by armed conflicts. One such agonizing situation prevails in Indian occupied Kashmir, where Kashmiris are suffering with more than 65 days of curfew and communication blackout, which had turned Kashmir into a hell of fear, anger and anxiety. However, most disappointing and worrisome is the coldhearted silence of the world’s leadership on Kashmir.
Kashmiri children in Indian occupied Kashmir are living under miserable environment. Children especially young girls cannot be aloof from the miseries of their families. Every child is knitted with family, relatives and friends. A child under fear that his/her father will be taken away any time, a child with an anxious mother fearful of her life and honor and young siblings stuck in homes with shortage of basic needs deserves not empty sympathies but urgent actions are required to address the issue and bring some normalcy to Kashmiri children
The Kashmiri girls and boys are living extreme agony and fear, as there are reports of Indian occupation forces snatching children from their mothers during night raids. These snatched children (girls and boys) are officially untraceable with no communication with family. There is no account of the torment and torture these children go through as the returnees are usually shock struck and some never return.
The world is struggling with women rights. There is a need to understand that the very initiation of core women problems start from childhood when a young girl is deprived of her rights. It is during childhood when the vulnerability of being woman is seeped into innocent minds of girls. The situation of Indian occupied Kashmir is extremely dangerous for young girls who are the most vulnerable in the spectrum of society and are bound to live in extreme agony and fear creating anxiety and stress. Young girls losing fathers and brothers grow deep sense of insecurity with no available protection. There is prevailing fear among young girls of being mishandled to an extent of being abused by Indian forces, when a mother is not safe a daughter is defenseless.
Where a home is devoid of sense of protection and safety, the only other refuge for children is a School. The inhumane curfew has even taken this right away from Kashmiri children. The local community is trying to hold private classes to lessen the impact on children, however, this dark period of Indian aggression will have long lasting scars on the very souls of Kashmiri children. Where the Indian security institutes including police and armed forces are perpetrators of horrible crimes.
