84,000 incidents of violence against children take place a yr
Staff Correspondent
About 84,000 incidents of violence against children are taking place every year in the absence of 'safety' or 'child-friendly environment' in society, which usually cast a long-term negative impact on children, according to statistics provided by Save the Children, UK.Non-implementation of the laws concerning child rights, carelessness of judges regarding the child act, discrepancy in general and special laws asserting the age of children and lack of awareness on the part of magistrates, police and probation officers about the issue are major causes behind the violence against children, experts said at a seminar in the city yesterday. Save the Children, UK organised the dissemination seminar titled 'Justice system for children in Bangladesh', at Cirdap auditorium. The speakers also stressed the need to launch awareness campaign involving people of different levels, including magistrates, to improve the juvenile justice system. "We must keep it in mind that children are yet to develop their own mindset and do not know what is correct or offence. So the purpose of law is to protect the children and create a child-friendly environment for those exposed to criminal activities," said justice M Imman Ali. "The children are not meant to be sent to jail and even many of our magistrates are not aware of child rights. Awareness programme involving the people concerned, including magistrates, should be arranged to benefit our children and protect them from abuse or ill treatment," he added. Prof Dr Borhan Uddin Khan presented the keynote paper titled 'Justice system for children in Bangladesh and the Role of State and Non-state actors' in the seminar chaired by MA Hye Howlader, secretary, ministry of social welfare. Justice Fazlul Karim, Advocate Dr Shahdeen Malik, Dr Sumaya Khair, Dr Ismat Shamim and Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Jalal Ahmed also took part in the seminar. The experts said the major obstacles to ensuring child rights are inconsistency in interpretation of the Children Act 1974, non-existence of national data on various aspects of children and their protection, lack of coordination between policemen and probation officers, faults of parents/guardians, faults in the social system and police officials wrongly mentioning the age of accused children in the first information report.
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Justice Fazlul Karim speaks at a seminar titled 'Justice system for children in Bangladesh', at Cirdap auditorium in the city yesterday. On his left is MA Hye Howlader and on his right is Justice M Imman Ali. PHOTO: STAR |
