Prioritizing and Protecting Children’s Rights Amidst the Pandemic

 

The global sanitary crisis has brought unprecedented changes in our interactions and routines due to social distancing and confinement. In many countries, only essential businesses have been functioning normally while many adults in institutions and companies have worked from home and children followed their school lessons online. Families, communities, businesses and governments have learned heavily on internet, digital technology and social media to continue day-to-day activities and also considerably expanded their use for entertainment. Children who contract COVID-19 appear to have less severe symptoms and lower mortality rates than other age groups. But in myriad other ways, the COVID-19 crisis is having a devastating effect on children, with potentially far-reaching and long-term negative impacts. Stresses on families, particularly those living under quarantines, lockdowns and other restrictions on freedom of movement, may increase the incidence of violence in the home. As the global death toll from COVID-19 increases, large numbers of children will be orphaned and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

This report outlines key human rights risks to children related to the COVID-19 crisis, and steps that governments should take to protect children’s rights in the pandemic, mitigate its devastating effects, and benefit children after the crisis is over. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) together with its partner agencies and organizations expressed commitment to continue safeguarding and promoting the rights and welfare of the children amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. “The DSWD remains committed to protect and uphold the rights of children by continuously establishing stronger and more unified platforms to address policy gaps and programs necessary in creating a safe and friendly environment for the full participation and realization of children’s rights around the country,” it said in a statement. Also, the six-point plan proposes a set of practical and concrete actions to reunite the world around a common cause: the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To do so, decision makers must start by listening to children and young people and including them in decision-making. It is they – especially girls; children facing poverty, exclusion, or violence; those with disabilities; children affected or displaced by humanitarian crisis; and children without parental care – who will live with the impact of this pandemic for decades to come. UNICEF came up with a solution and asks the governments and our partners to:

• Prioritize the reopening of schools: Take all measures possible to reopen schools safely and keep them open.
• Increase education funding and ensure equal access to quality, violence-free education so every child learns. This will require a focus on the most marginalized children, including girls, children under attack and on the move, children with disabilities, and children living in rural communities or without access to the internet.
• Close the digital divide by connecting all children and young people to the internet by 2030 and reaching 3.5 billion children and young people with safe, quality, accessible and equitable online learning.
• Protect schools and places of learning from attack, and hold perpetrators of these attacks to account.

Now these are the issues  with solutions to help lessen the complication and is approved by the agency, which I think are very effective and can really help protect the rights of children amidst the pandemic.Overall, children may be confined, but their rights are not!

References:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/09/covid-19-and-childrens-rights

https://www.coe.int/en/web/children/covid-19

https://www.end-violence.org/protecting-children-during-covid-19-outbreak

https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/agenda-for-action