Keeping children safe is our responsibility

According to a recent survey by a humanitarian aid organisation, one out of every two Indian children has experienced sexual abuse. For a country that is home to 19 per cent of the world’s children, that is a sobering and heart-breaking statistic. Homes and schools must be safe and secure havens for our children but instead, cases of abuse, exploitation and violence against them have been reported in both these places.

The Government drafted the National Policy for Children 2013 to “build a preventive and responsive child protection system and promote effective enforcement of punitive legislative and administrative measures against all forms of child abuse and neglect”.

While we have successfully brought in children-specific legislations such as the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO) and the amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015, our performance in creating robust and reliable preventive response systems has been markedly poor. The spate of brutal crimes against children demonstrates that our collective approach to child safety in schools remains ad hoc, laissez-faire and poorly monitored, highlighting the lack of both soft and hard preventive infrastructure.

In large cities, it is estimated that children spend as many as 8 to 9 hours a day away from home, while those in smaller towns and rural areas spend 5 to 6 hours outside the home. In fact, the number of children in India’s nearly 1.6 million schools is much larger than the population of most countries of the world. We need to develop a Uniform Child Protection Policy for all schools, whether private or government, and even tribal ashramshalas (residential schools) in remote parts of the country.

It must be said that the ministry for human resource development has comprehensive guidelines that take into consideration physical infrastructure such as separate and age-appropriate toilets to safeguard children in school. These also take into account issues related to a school’s staff such as background checks and mental make-up. However, these guidelines need to be made mandatory and compliance must be made non-negotiable.

The policy should emphasise ‘gatekeeping’ to ensure that the recruitment of both teaching and non-teaching staff is done after thorough police verification and psycho-social assessment. Many private and government-aided schools already follow this process, but it must now become compulsory for all. It should also be mandatory for schools to enrol trained counsellors who can both prevent and detect abuse of children — this could be an existing teacher who has undergone the requisite training or a separate counsellor. In addition, all teachers need to be sensitised about child abuse, taught to recognise it and made aware of laws such as the POCSO Act which makes reporting such acts compulsory.

Sessions with children on safety and prevention of abuse ought to become part of the curriculum. They need to have a designated point of contact and rest assured that there is a safe space where they can speak and be heard.

Whenever there is a gruesome incidence of violence against children, NGOs, parents, school associations and representatives of the Government get locked into defensive or confrontational positions. There is a three-way trust deficit between schools, parents and the Government. Instead of looking for solutions, we look for ‘culprits’, ‘perpetrators’ and ‘scapegoats’. Of course, the guilty must be punished, but more than that, we need a system that can permanently eliminate the abuse of children.

An open dialogue involving all three stakeholders can go a long way towards creating the right ecosystem for building preventive response mechanisms. Parents need to realise that even though they have entrusted their children to the school, the safety of their child is a collective responsibility.

Parents can be a source of support and strength. By being watchful guardians, they can ensure that schools follow the guidelines for child protection and by being supportive, they can ensure that any instance of abuse is quickly brought to light.

Protecting children is a common shared responsibility; it cannot be done in isolation by either the school or parents or government. We must all work together to make sure instances of child abuse soon become historical references and not present-day realities.

The writer is head of PA and advocacy, Tata Trusts

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