True Equity & Justice Of Society Depends On How Fairly It Treats Its Children: Justice S. Ravindra Bhat

The Orissa High Court, in collaboration with the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Odisha and UNICEF, has organised a Regional Consultation Program on Effective Implementation of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015 on Saturday. Justice S. Ravindra Bhat, Judge, Supreme Court of India and Chairperson, the Juvenile Justice Committee, Supreme Court of India took part and spoke at the event which was also attended by Justice Madan B. Lokur, Former Judge, Supreme Court of India. At the outset, Justice Bhat congratulated the High Court of Orissa for organising the consultation program. Further, he appreciated that the program is not only confined to judiciary but also has included scholars and domain experts in the area of juvenile justice as resource persons. Before delving to the specific concerns regarding the issue, he said that often we fall into the trap of seeing implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act within a silo. But this is far from the truth. Care and protection of children extend beyond the express provisions of the law. He cited the UNESCO State of the Education Report for India, 2021. He said the Report provides incredible insight as to how we must build frameworks for capacity building of teachers for benefit of children. The Report states that Chhattisgarh, for example, has a total of 56,474 schools of which 76% are rural and 95% of these rural schools rely on a single teacher. Similarly, Bihar with 90% of rural schools has a vacancy of 56% in the posts of teachers. Hence, it requires 2,22,316 teachers to simply meet its vacancy requirements. Again, in 45,908 schools of Jharkhand, over 14% of them rely on a single teacher and there is an overall vacancy of nearly 40%. He said that though the deliberations in the event may not have a direct impact on the above statistics, yet it is important to acknowledge that education and capacity building of teachers have a massive impact on overall development of children. Hence, he urged that through the deliberations, at least a beginning be made to recognise the need for education of children who are institutionalised or find their way to these institutions. When it comes to observation homes or especially the class of children who are in conflict with law, the challenge is that they are staying there for a short period of time. He said, the question is what kind of education policies are available for them and what kind of continual monitoring the State is ensuring for these children once they get into some education plans. These are the concerns, he said, that we have to directly engage in and to reach a point where we can come out with a consensus and a plan. The he highlighted that India ratified the UN Convention on Rights of Children in 1992. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring the last year as the 'International Year for Elimination of Child Labour'. In this regard, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) called for reports from all the states and Union Territories on action taken against child trafficking. He again pointed out that the concern of child trafficking is not limited to child labour as human trafficking for sex works is alarming in the eastern region of the country, especially in West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. He said, these are not always due to complete lack of infrastructure or prioritisation. For instance, Odisha has 741 reported victims of human trafficking, which is the second highest in the nation, despite having 25 Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking Units in the State. A large proportion of the above trafficked persons are children. As many as 653 persons were trafficked for forced labour, which accounts for 44.97% of the total victims from this category in India in 2020. The situation reflects deep concern. Jharkhand had 239 cases in 2019 and 301 in 2020. West Bengal reported 262 cases in 2019 and 71 in 2020. When the matter comes to trafficking of children, he stressed, there is a huge mismatch in data. The Anti-Human Trafficking Units reported only 81 cases of girl trafficking, but the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reflected that over 3259 girls are missing since 2011. In addition to this alarming statistics, in 2020 itself there were cases of 2556 missing girl children in the state. He said, that though he mentioned a lot of statistics, still the peril is that these statistics are only indicative but numbers in reality are far beyond. This certainly points to the scope for considering a specialised legislation dealing with organised crime such as trafficking in these states. However, in the meanwhile a lot can be done in the existing framework. Regardless of works done by NGOs and civil society organisations which have worked and will continue to work towards curbing this menace, our institutional framework must make it a priority and through...

True Equity & Justice Of Society Depends On How Fairly It Treats Its Children: Justice S. Ravindra Bhat

Jyoti Prakash Dutta

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