HURIWA Wants Presidential Desk On Child Rights:
+Canvasses Appointment Of First Lady As Co'ordinator Of Presidential Child Rights Desk:
As Nigeria joins the international community to mark the year 2014 World Day for the Girl Child a Pro-Democracy Non-Governmental Organization-HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA [HURIWA] has called on President Good Luck Jonathan to take stronger policy and legal frameworks to ensure the effective enforcement of the fundamental human Rights of the Nigerian Children by reorganizing the institutional bodies charged with these constitutional duties because of the apparent systemic failures and weak implementation of the legal provisions that protects the Nigerian CHILDREN.
Among the immediate but comprehensive steps recommended by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria [HURIWA] for implementation is the setting up of a legally protected Presidential Desk for the protection and promotion of the human rights of the Nigerian Children [PDRC] to be directly supervised by the President but coordinated by the Wife of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In a statement made available to the media and endorsed jointly by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said it has become imperative for a presidential desk or commission on the Rights of the Nigerian Child to be set up to coordinate activities related to the enforcement of the rights of the Nigerian Children scattered in some of the mandates embedded in the diverse legal frameworks that enabled the setting up of certain rights-based institutions such as the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission [NHRC], the National Agency against trafficking in Persons [NAPTIP] and the Federal ministry of Women Affairs.
HURIWA said the lack of a national cohesion and a centralised monitoring body that will specifically work round the clock to ensure the effective and efficient use of legal and policy frameworks to protect the rights of the Nigerian children is responsible for the widespread cases of violations of the rights of the Nigerian children and the proliferation of what is now notoriously called BABIES FACTORIES across the country.
HURIWA further stated that the existence of over 10 million out- of -school children made up of the girl child in the North and the boy child in the South East makes it necessary that radical and fundamental changes are made in the area of enforcement of the human rights of the Nigerian Children.
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria [HURIWA] also faulted the decision of past policy and law making bodies for not clearly creating a full fledge ministry to cater for the specific rights of the Nigerian Children even as the Rights group stated that the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs as the name connotes has never championed the promotion and protection of the Rights of the Nigerian Children because basically most holders of the high office of the Minister of Women Affairs have often concentrated on the promotion of cosmetic activities that speak to the issue of the Rights of the Nigerian adult women and has persistently consigned the issue of child rights to the doorsteps of bureaucratic bottlenecks and inertia.
HURIWA stated thus; ”We hereby appeal to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to set up a Presidential desk or commission for the promotion and protection of the Rights of the Nigerian Children with the full compliments of very few but highly competent professionally qualified child rights experts to be drawn from already existing Child Rights related agencies. This small but powerful Presidential institution on the rights of the Nigerian Children should be charged with the task of formulating and implementing policy and legal frameworks on behalf of the Nigerian Government in active partnership with relevant agencies. This Presidential desk/commission on the Rights of the Nigerian Children should also work out implementable mechanisms with the ministries of women/children affairs of the 36 states and Abuja with a view to consolidating measures and policy frameworks to check the proliferation of the gross human rights abuses against the Nigerian Children. The Presidential Desk should be coordinated by the wife of the President even as the wives of the 36 state governors and the minister of the FCT should be invited on advisory capacity to wage effective national war against the abuses of the Rights of the Nigerian Children with a clear mandate”.
HURIWA further stated thus; ”The Presidential Desk on the Rights of the Nigerian Children should also have a legal department to be staffed by skilful and competent professional lawyers vast in the jurisdiction of family and child rights law drawn from the Federal ministry of justice so that cases on abuses of the rights of the Nigerian Children should be undertaken by this Presidential desk on pro bono basis to the affected children and for the alleged violators of the Rights of the Nigerian Children to be vigorously and competently prosecuted in the competent courts of law. The Presidential desk on the Rights of the Nigerian Children should also have a strong and proactive media unit for the waging of enlightenment campaign on the need to name, shame and prosecute al violators of the human Rights of the Nigerian Children. The Presidential desk on the Rights of the Nigerian Children should also work vigorously to convince the governments and houses of assembly of the 36 states on the need to establish functional family courts and for the immediate passage of the child rights law which since the year 2003 became a law by the National Assembly but which demands domestication by the respective state houses of assembly. Regrettably, only few states have domesticated the Child Rights law of Nigeria of 2003. ”
The post HURIWA Wants Presidential Desk On Child Rights: appeared first on Pointblank News .