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Advocates seek legislative backing for child rights

By Onyinye Iyeke
11 February 2015   |   11:00 pm
CHILD right advocates have called for the use of various treaties, agreements and existing laws to improve social services for children, especially the quality of care in orphanages across the country.   The advocates, who spoke at the Good Home Quality Service Advocacy Pilot Project Scheme and award ceremony event held recently in Lagos, said…

CHILD right advocates have called for the use of various treaties, agreements and existing laws to improve social services for children, especially the quality of care in orphanages across the country.

  The advocates, who spoke at the Good Home Quality Service Advocacy Pilot Project Scheme and award ceremony event held recently in Lagos, said the legal provisions are clear on the matter, but often left unimplemented.

  Legal practitioner, Folasade Adetiba, observed that the child rights have assumed international dimension, with several universal provisions for basic rights of children. 

  According to her, there was the emergence of the Rights of the child in July 1990; the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Assembly of Heads of States and Governments adopted the African Unity (AU) charter on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and 2000; Nigeria signed both instruments ‘a’ and ‘b’ in 2013 and in May 2007, the Child Rights Law (CRL) came into existence in Lagos State.

  Under the sections 3 to15 of the CRL, the rights accorded to a child include: the right to life, right to name, right to freedom, right to freedom of association, right to privacy, right to free, compulsory and universal basic education (special protection where needed), parental care and protection.

  Others are right to rest and leisure and to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to his/her age, right to enjoy the best attainable state of physical, mental and spiritual health, as well as the right to be protected from willful, reckless, negligent harm or injury during and after the birth of the child.

  Prohibition created in favor of the child under the CRL section 20 – 31 contain prohibitions which include marriage or betrothal of a child, exposure to the use of or distribution of narcotic drugs, buying, selling or hiring a child, having sex with a child whether or not the child consented, and no child shall be recruited into any of the branches of the armed forces in the Federation, or get involved in any military operations or hostilities.

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