Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Call for Papers : "Child Rights and the Media"



Northeastern Regional Seminar
on
‘Child Rights and the Media’
(31 October – 01 November, 2013)
at
EFL University, Shillong Campus
organized by
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in partnership with UNICEF Assam





Background

The Indian Constitution has ample provisions for protection, development and welfare of children. There are a wide range of laws that guarantee children their rights and entitlements as provided in the Constitution as well as in the UN Convention. The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child was adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Declaration was accepted by the Government of India.

The Convention revalidates the rights guaranteed to children by the Constitution of India, and is, therefore, a powerful weapon to contest forces that deny these rights. The Convention has added legal and moral dimensions to child's rights and the obligation to fulfill children’s basic needs. However, these rights and policies become meaningless unless the life of the child in the family and community improves. This challenge of ensuring that child rights are met for every child is a pertinent issue and requires the Government’s commitment to the cause of children.
The UN Convention consists of 41 articles, each of which details a different type of right. All the rights are considered important and they interact with one another to form an integrated set of rights. A common approach is to group these articles together under the following themes:
·      Survival rights: include the child’s right to life and the needs that are most basic to existence, such as nutrition, shelter, an adequate living standard, and access to medical services.
·      Development rights: include the right to education, play, leisure, cultural activities, access to information, and freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
·      Protection rights: ensure children are safeguarded against all forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation, including special care for refugee children; safeguards for children in the criminal justice system; protection for children in employment; protection and rehabilitation for children who have suffered exploitation or abuse of any kind.
·      Participation rights: encompass children's freedom to express opinions, to have a say in matters affecting their own lives, to join associations and to assemble peacefully. As their capacities develop, children should have increasing opportunity to participate in the activities of society, in preparation for adulthood.
The Convention defines a 'child' as a person till the age of 18, unless the laws of a particular country set the legal age for adulthood younger. The Committee on the
Rights of the Child, the monitoring body for the Convention, has encouraged States to review the age of majority if it is set below 18 and to increase the level of protection for all children under 18.

The Constitution also guarantees rights that are specifically applicable to children include:

  • Right to free and compulsory elementary education for all children in the 6-14 year age group
  • Right to be protected from any hazardous employment till the age of 14 years
  •  Right to be protected from being abused and forced by economic necessity to enter occupations unsuited to their age or strength
  • Right to equal opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity and guaranteed protection of childhood and youth against exploitation and against moral and material abandonment
  •  Right to early childhood care and education to all children until they complete the age of six years 

In addition, children also have access to rights as equal citizens of India, just as any other adult male or female like Right to equality (Article 14), Right against discrimination (Article 15) etc.

Thematic discourse for the Seminar

The seminar seeks to raise critical questions on current trends in journalism where the visibility of children’s issues seems low on the public agenda. Ethical standards and critical reporting of child related issues still remain to be prioritized against sensationalist portrayal of children. In particular, vulnerable and marginalized children often remain outside the purview of mainstream media’s interest to report on issues that affect their lives or enable participation of children in the public debate in matters affecting them.  This becomes even more critical when reporting is conducted in case of children living in vulnerable circumstances, such as in case of specially abled children, children in institutions, ethnic minorities, poor children, children who work and live in the streets, children in conflict with the law and children affected by HIV, children affected by violence. In most cases reporting on children is not always positive and efforts for appropriate media representation of children are rarely made. The focus and attention has been invariably on sensationalist media coverage of children in difficult circumstances with little respect for their rights or welfare.

It is surprising that much of the media content created for and distributed to children around the globe is ubiquitous with gender and racial stereotypes, violence, and commercialization. Critics charge that much of children’s media suppresses imagination, provides limited opportunities for identification with a variety of types of characters, and encourages unhealthy and risky behaviors. Clearly, much of the media created for children does not promote the best interest of children. Yet children have the right to media that respond to their needs, reflect their experiences, and respect them as more than consumers in a global economy and most importantly, children have a right to participate on issues relating to them. At a time when technological advances make it possible to reach more children around the world, and include more voices in the global information flow, we need to examine the role of the media in social transformation of children’s lives.

Media has the greatest potential of bringing to the forefront issues affecting children such as school drop-out, exploitation due to trafficking, child labour, abuse, involvement of children in armed conflict, sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Mainstream media with its great potential for a widespread reach has immense potentiality to become a vehicle for children to showcase their multifarious stories which they experience in their daily lives; their everyday challenges the obstacles they overcome as well as their participation in different activities. Scheduling and planning programmes and identify appropriate news and features on children can impact effectively on policy makers on the one hand as well as provide an opportunity to children to participate in discussions concerning them. Yet, despite such capability, power and influence of media, facilitate children to exercise their rights and provide adequate space on them it is unfortunate that no specific policy or plan for reporting on children has ever been made. The sporadic initiatives by the very few individuals and media houses have not left a mark and promises for a sustained d initiative can hardly be seen.

The seminar will pose these pertinent questions and will discuss and understand initiatives that are already underway as well as opportunities that can still be made to help identify ways to promote and protect the rights of children by taking a more pro-active role by sensitizing community members, parents and children on one hand and the media on the other.


The Call for Papers

The Call for papers will provide a scope to raise the issue of Child Rights for discussion and deliberation in the public domain through active participation at the seminar and submissions of thematic papers.  The questions are many - do children have rights? If so, what are they? And how are these rights need to be interpreted and protected in a world dramatically changed by the media where children consume and communicate? The answers to these queries on children’s rights have continued to pose questions that are both difficult and somewhat uncomfortable to answer and also lack consensus as many believe it should have been sought by now.

When we consider the effects of media on children, the questions become more complex and the answers more argumentative. Therefore there is an urgent need to explicitly examine the vital role of media which can create awareness on children ́s right to access information and freedom of expression and more importantly, demand their protection from harmful and violent media content as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The thematic rubric of the seminar is as mentioned below:
  1. Constitutional Rights and challenges
  2. Media representation of children
  3. Media content on children
  4. Media access by children
  5. Children Rights and media in Northeast India
  6. Visual media and children : Internet and Pornography
  7. Specially abled children and media
  8. Children in conflict zones

The language of the seminar will be in English and participants are welcome from disciplines such as Journalism, Social Science, Development studies, Humanities, Communication, Development Communication and from NGO’s, Social and Child welfare institutions. 

Faculty members from Northeastern Universities and Colleges, interested post graduate and research scholars are encouraged to participate and send their abstracts on or before 08 October, 2013 to chime.jmc@eflushc.ac.in ( Please give the subject as Abstract for CHIME 2013 Seminar)


Important Dates :

1. Last Date for Abstract submission : 08 October, 2013 ( Tuesday)
2. Acceptance notification of shortlisted abstract : 13 October, 2013 ( Sunday)
3. Last date for registration and confirmation for participation : 17 October, 2013
4. Full Paper Submission of the selected abstract : 28 October, 2013
5. Seminar Commences : 31 October, 2013 and 01 November, 2013

Coordinator :

Mr. Alankar Kaushik 
alankar@eflushc.ac.in
Hello me @ +91-9612951275


Assistant Coordinator:

Mr. Abir Suchiang
abir@eflushc.ac.in
Hello me @ +91- 9863199265


Executive Member :

Ms Santidora Nongpluh
nongpluh@eflushc.ac.in


Student Coordinator :
Mr. Rajshekhar Rajkhowa (rajshekhar@eflushc.ac.in)
Ms Sonam Sultana Shah ( sonam@eflushc.ac.in)

===========








Tuesday, September 10, 2013



      Northeastern Regional Seminar 

                                            on

       "Child Rights and the Media"


                                      31 October - 01 November, 2013

                                                                          @ EFLU Shillong Campus


email : chime. jmc@eflushc.ac.in
http://eflushc.ac.in/academic_programs/journalism/chime2013.html

Coordinator : Mr Alankar Kaushik ( +91- 9612951275)
Assistant Coordinator : Mr Abir Suchiang (+91- 9863199265)
Executive Member : Ms Santidora Nongpluh
Student Coordinator : Mr Rajshekhar Rajkhowa
                                    Ms Sonam Sultana Shah 

                            Local Student Coordinator : Mr. Ostarnic Marbaniang







Call for Papers - coming soon !!!!!!!

Northeastern Regional Seminar on "Children Rights and the Media" - Oct 31 and 01 Nov, 2013