India : Developments Threaten Years of Work by UNICEF in Safeguarding Child Rights : Anjana Mangalagiri

 

I would like to share two very disturbing developments in recent times in India that have been published in the media. Hope you can consider or if possible, reproducing these in the next issue of the XUNICEF newsletter, to bring to attention the status of children's rights in India today.

The first article reports that the largest govt run ECD programme in the world, is now being squeezed. In each annual budget over the last 5 years, the Anganwadi programme of nutrition and growth monitoring for children below 6 and for pregnant mothers is seeing a steady decline in budgetary allocation as the intention of the govt is to eventually privatize all social sector services. Even the budget for social security meant for populations below poverty line, has been consistently shrinking.

  
The second is an article published on an independent online media website - Scroll.in (see link) - a tragic commentary on all the years of work and effort put in by UNICEF and other organizations to establish institutions for safeguarding children and protecting their rights in the country and how these very same institutions are turning CRC on its head! Please see this link:

https://scroll.in/article/1016421/how-hindutva-hijacked-indias-child-rights-body


Thanks for your attention.


warm regards,
Anjana Mangalagiri