Bangladesh is one of the world’s most populous countries. It is also home to about 66 million children, who constitute around 45 per cent of the country’s total population.
But sadly, Bangladesh’s abundance of youth has little to celebrate.
A total of 4.5 million children in Bangladesh work as child labourers. Up to 40 per cent of those younger than 5 years old are malnourished. Bangladesh has the fourth highest rate of child marriage in the world and rising levels of child abuse: a total of 968 children were abused and killed in last three and a half years, according to official statistics.
In fact, it would be difficult to find another country in the world where minors face such a range of problems.
However, several popular initiatives recently adopted by the government promise to make Bangladesh a slightly more child-friendly country.
Lifting the burden of the school bag
If you stand in front of a school in the morning in Bangladesh, you will see numerous children carrying heavy, outsized school bags on their tiny frames.
Blogger Tutul Chowdhury writes on Facebook about his son Rihan:
To the relief of school-going children, the country’s High Court recently issued a ruling aiming to lighten schoolbags for children.
The court ordered the government to formulate a law or regulation prohibiting children from carrying schoolbags that weigh more than 10 per cent of a child’s body weight, and preventing the use of schoolbags by pre-primary children.
Shekh Sahiha Alam, a correspondent for the Daily Prothom Alo news outlet, spent 15 days weighing the schoolbags of children across various schools, ranging from nursery to class eight.
Her findings were as follows:
Netizens welcomed the court’s ruling.
Emdadul Haque, an assistant professor of law at Southeast University, Bangladesh, tweeted:
Teach children to swim
Most Bangladeshis live in villages that are close to riverbanks. The land is criss-crossed with many rivers of different length and width. There are around 700 rivers in the country.
Come the rainy season the rivers fill up with water. During that time many children die from drowning.
According to a recent report of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), every year 18,000 children die because of they do not know how to swim.
To save them from drowning, the government has decided to make swimming lessons mandatory for all schoolchildren. The education ministry has published a draft circular on its website.
People are lauding the move of the Education Ministry. American swimmer Nathan Adrian also appreciated the initiative.
In association with UNICEF, the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC) and Royal Life Saving Society Australia (RLSSA) all came together to create the SwimSafe program to reduce the number of water-related deaths.
They shared a swimming instruction video on YouTube:
First ever children’s budget
Finally, the first ever children’s budget was created in Bangladesh along with the the 2015-16 fiscal year budget.
It has been allocated nearly 26 thousands crore Taka (US $3,341,213). Which is 8.76 per cent of the national budget.
The child’s budget is not separate from the state budget. Rather, it serves to facilitate and highlight the establishment of children’s rights by reminding policy makers to prioritise children in their resource allocation.
Bangladesh’s Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith re-emphasised the need for a children’s budget in his budget speech:
Child rights activists hailed the government initiative.
Abdullah Al Mamun, programme coordinator of Manusher Jonno Foundation, toldProthom Alo:
Bangladesh’s decision-makers, it seems, are coming round to the idea of creating a better living environment for almost half of the country’s citizens. Now the question is whether these initiatives will be put into practice.
Source: Global Voice