Jeremy Bentham opined years ago that the feebleness of infancy demands continual protection and that everything should be done for an imperfect being, which as yet does nothing for itself.
The primary goal of the average marriage in Nigeria is procreation. This is largely because of the cultural belief that procreation is the only known source of perpetuation for both the family and society.
Children are priceless as they fulfill so many tangible and intangible functions for the parents and the society which cannot be measured in pecuniary terms.
However, it is difficult to make my brothers accept that the birth of a child is a duty that comes with responsibility and that one of the main considerations before childbirth is for couples to weigh the size of their income. Childbirth is an economic issue, gone are the days when economic conditions weren’t a factor in the growth and development of a child.
Children born in poor homes are more likely to be abused. Poverty affects all the basic rights of a child, poverty gives way to malnutrition, child pawning, child labour, maltreatment, and all forms of exploitation. Unfortunately for the child, these things happen at a time when he cannot help himself.
The right of a child is first and foremost a fundamental human right, as enshrined in several legal instruments, including, but not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenants on Economic and Social Cultural Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and several domestic legislations.
The above laws proclaimed a catalog of basic rights, including the right to life, the right not to be held in slavery, not to be tortured, to equal protection, right to education, however, whenever these rights are used in the generic term, it contemplates the whole human race, though the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is more specific to the rights of the child which broadly focused on the 3Ps: Provision, Protection, and participation.
Every child should be provided with decent meals, health care, education, rest, and play. Having provided the above, every child shall have a right to be shielded from harmful acts and practices and finally every child has the right to be heard on decisions affecting his or her life depending on his or her cognitive abilities.
The law makes it both criminal and civil offences for the parents, guardians, or caregivers who deny children of these basic rights, unfortunate, in our society we have children who are constantly abused, denied the right to education, and forced into child labour by asking them to sale pure water, groundnut, banana and other items on the street.
The government and members of the civil society have a huge responsibility to ensure that laws protecting the rights of children are enforced. There are a lot of irresponsible and mentally ill parents in our society today. Some of them are not capable of taking care of themselves, not to talk of attending to the needs of the child, many have recruited their children to hawk on the street in order to feed themselves who are adults.
I, therefore, propose that a special agency or ministry should be created in each state and different local government areas to especially attend to the needs of children. The idea of warehousing the problems of the child in the Ministries of Women Affairs has yielded very little in the protection of the Child, this is as women’s issues dominate activities in such ministries. We all owe a duty to humanity to protect every vulnerable child under the care of an irresponsible adult(s).
Roland Uwakwe, Esq.