As Nigeria joins the international community to mark the
year 2014 World Day for the Girl Child, a pro-democracy non-governmental
organisation, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has called
on President Goodluck Jonathan to initiate stronger policies and legal
frameworks to ensure effective enforcement of the fundamental human rights of
the Nigerian child by reorganising the institutional bodies charged with these
constitutional duties because of the apparent systemic failure and weak implementation
of the legal provisions that protect the Nigerian child.
The association has therefore
called for the immediate setting up of a legally protected presidential desk
for the protection and promotion of the human rights of Nigerian children, to
be directly supervised by the president but coordinated by the First Lady 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 BABY 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 for radical and fundamental
changes to be made in the area of enforcement of the human rights of the
Nigerian children.
The association 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.
“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.
“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 statement read.
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