Government asked to enforce laws, conventions on Child Rights
Government and policy makers have been asked to put in the necessary facilities and programmes to ensure the enforcement and sustenance of conventions and laws on child Rights in Ghana .
The Principal State Attorney of the Central Region, Mrs Hannah Spencer Taylor, who made the call, said expressed worry that though Ghana was among the first country to rectify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, some children were being abused through child labour, human trafficking, rape and neglect among others.
Mrs Taylor, who made the call at the celebration of this year’s African Union Day of the African child in Cape Coast on Saturday, said it was time to identify and legalise child rights to make them operational.
The Day set up by the African Union in commemoration of the massacre of black children of Soweto in 1976 for demonstrating for the rights to education, was organised by Compassion International Ghana (CIG)in collaboration with its church partners, on the theme ” The Rights of Children: The duty to Protect, Respect, Promote and Fulfil”.
It was attended by more than 700 children drawn from Child Development Centres of Compassion’s Church partners.
The children entertained the audience with poetry recitals, cultural displays, exhibition, speeches and drama on child neglect.
Mrs Taylor said children were entitled to the right to education, health, parental property and name among others.
She lauded Government for introducing the Capitation Grant, School Feeding Programme, provision of school uniforms and exercises books free of charge to school children.
Mrs Taylor noted that there was no discrimination against women in respect with education in Ghana, but expressed worry about high school drop- out rate among girls due teenage pregnancy and parents preference of educating the boy-child.
She asked parents and religious organizations to contribute to the development and growth of children.
Mrs Taylor appealed to churches to establish child education fund and asked them to concentrate on the spiritual physical needs of their members.
Mr Padmore Agyapong Baffour, the Country Director CIG , said education was the foundation for development and could be used to eliminate poverty and improve the living standards of the people.
He called on stakeholders in education to collaborate efforts to ensure that the Millennium Development Goal two, which states that by 2015 every child everywhere should be able to complete primary education was achieved.
Mr Baffour said that over the last five years, C IG had through sponsors and donors disbursed GH¢40, 121.078 to 162 churches in the Greater Accra, Central and Eastern regions towards the development of 39,366 registered children.
He said plans were far advanced to expand the programmes to the Volta and Eastern regions next year, to bring the total number of beneficiary children to 48,651.
Source: GNA