Child Help In Legal Defence of Rights to Education in Nigeria (C.H.I.L.D.R.E.N.) Proje

CONCEPT NOTE ON A PROJECT TO CONDUCT A TRAINING WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN PROJECT MEMBERS AND ACTIVISTS ON CHILD RIGHTS ADVOCACY, MONITORING, INVESTIGATION AND REPORTING SKILLS WITH WHICH TO PRODUCE AND LOBBY LEGISLATORS TO PASS INTO LAW A DRAFT BILL TO PROHIBIT CHILD ABUSE, REFUSAL OF PARENTS TO SEND CHILDREN OF PRIMARY SCHOOL AGE TO AND THEIR WITHDRAWAL FROM SCHOOL IN LAGOS STATE

Problem Identification

The plights of Nigerian children are catholic and are on ascendancy with the dwindling economic fortunes of parents and guardians. To be a child in Nigeria is to be found in a web of deprivation and hardship. The pattern of these hardships includes child slavery, child labour, child prostitution, child trafficking, sexual exploitation and child commoditization. Children also suffer poverty, maltreatment, neglect and sexual abuse. Many Nigerian children also die of curable or preventable diseases.

By reason of their physical and mental immaturity, children need special safeguards and care including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth. However, increasing poverty which has consumed the lower class and which is sweeping the middle class under, has rendered more and more parents incapable of providing or fending for their children. The consequence is that the tendency of parents to "hire out" their children within the age of eight (8) to fifteen (15) years to child slavers, are also on the increase.

Some parents prefer to remove their children of school age from school to help out in their farms, fishing fields or to hawk various articles of trade with all the attendant risks.

Underage children are also known to have been hired out by parents to agent who send them abroad for prostitution. Sometimes these agents promise to secure their victims plum jobs overseas, but on the contrary, they turn them to the streets of Europe as commercial sex workers and sometimes, without the knowledge of their parents.

Thousands of Nigerian children of school age are also known to be hired out on daily basis to street beggars for paltry sum to their parents or to beg on streets for alms on behalf of their parents.

Further more, teenagers and jobless female gender also commoditize children born alive by selling same to childless parents through many channels including motherless baby homes. For instance, the ActionAid International Nigeria recently uncovered one of such channels of illicit child trade through motherless baby home.

Though the history of legal protection of children in Nigeria dates back to 1948 when the Children and Young Persons Ordinance was first enacted. However, the legal protection of children was specifically entrenched in section 17 (3) (f) of 1979 constitution, which provided that:

"Children and young persons … should be protected against any exploitation whatsoever and against moral and material neglect."

But the said provision was unenforceable as it was only a directive principle of state policy.

Nigeria is also a signatory to United Nation convention on the child rights which it signed on March 21st 1991 but the said convention also had no binding force on Nigerian state until 2003 when Nigeria ratified the UN Convention on the Child Rights by enacting its provisions into law in accordance with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999.

Despite this galaxy of provisions protecting rights of the child in Nigeria, Nigerian children are still subjected to horrible experience.

This project therefore seeks to collaborate with the ActionAid International Nigeria, to fashion out strategies through which the rights of children in Lagos State will become a reality.

Project Activities

1. Training workshop for CHILDREN Project members and activists on Child Rights advocacy, monitoring, investigation and reporting skills.

2. Production of Draft Bill - "A Bill To Prohibit Child Abuse, Refusal Of Parents To Send Children Of Primary School Age to and their Withdrawal from School in Lagos State" and presentation of same to the Lagos State House of Assembly for enactment into law.

Project Goal

The project aims to engender respect for and protection of the Child Rights in Nigeria by building capacity of the CHILDREN Project to collate, investigate, publish and disseminate information as well as advocate on Child Rights situations in Nigeria.

Objectives

The following are the objectives:

Improve availability of information on cases of Child Rights abuses and violations in Nigeria through the following activities:

To ascertain societal perception of the status of childhood and the extent to which they think children should enjoy the provisions of the Child Rights Act.

To assess the extent to which children enjoy rights in Lagos State at present.

To advocate for the enactment of the Child Rights Act 2003 as a Lagos State Law.

To improve Child Rights situations in Nigeria by exposing abuses and advocating for observance of international standards by governments and individuals.

Project Rationale

Nigeria is estimated to have a population of about 120 million people. 47% of this estimated population is children between the ages of 1 - 17 years. The enactment and ratification of the Child Rights Act therefore represents a great achievement and recognition of the vulnerability of the child and the need for legal protection. It also marked a paradigm shift in the protection offered by the state to Children in Nigeria.

The Act made elaborate provisions for the rights of the child and highlights the universally acceptable standards, which extend to the protection of child's life, promotion of health and educational opportunities and prevention of exploitation, physical and sexual abuse.

Although the Child Rights Act affirmed a strong desire of the nation to bring to an end the sufferings of children, but expression of this desire in the Act can not alone bring about dramatic changes in the everyday lives of Nigerian children until its provisions are used as advocacy tool for mobilization and awareness creation within the society for society for social change.

The recent attempt by Lagos State Government to rid the streets of Lagos of destitute made it self-evident that hundreds of children of school age are trapped by the misfortunes of this class of persons. Their educational advancement is forever ruined; they can neither acquire any trade nor be gainfully employed in the future. They will definitely graduate into societal urchins, prostitutes, armed robbers or at best "senior beggars".

The CHILDREN Project proposes to act as a catalyst of social change by collaborating with the ActionAid International Nigeria, to create consciousness among Nigerian children, parents, guardians, government both at the state and local government levels on the provisions of the Child Rights Act and the need to observe and implement the provisions of the act within Lagos State.

The project will also advocate for the enactment of the Act into the laws of Lagos State to make direct enforcement of same easier and more realistic. The CHILDREN Project in partnership with the ActionAid International Nigeria will draft and present to the state House of Assembly a bill that will make it an offence for any parent or guardian to withdraw or refuse to send any child of school age to at least primary school.

The CHILDREN Project is of the firm conviction that the enactment of such bill will give effect to the universal Basic Education policy and other policies of the state towards achieving millennium goal in basic education.

Project activities

1. Training workshop for CHILDREN Project members and activists on Child Rights monitoring, investigation and reporting skills. The workshop will bring together 150 persons from the state government, local governments, traditional institution, civil society, and the academic in Lagos State, to cross-pollinate ideas on their perception of the status of the child and the extent children should enjoy rights. 5 resource persons who are vast in the Child Rights Act will be invited to deliver well-researched papers on the theme. The workshop will involve Active Participatory Learning Methods (APLM) this is to enable participants to express their views on the papers delivered by the resource persons.

2. Production of the Child Rights Training Manual: the Child Rights monitor (2000 copies) will be developed and distributed to train Child Rights monitors and the CHILDREN Project members in Local Government Councils of Lagos State. The manual will be a detailed guideline for collating and investigating the Child Rights abuses in the state. The Human Rights Education Project officer of the CHILDREN Project working in collaboration with ActionAid International Nigeria and a retained consultant will develop the monitor.

3. Production of Draft Bill - "A Bill To Prohibit Child Abuse, Refusal Of Parents To Send Children Of Primary School Age to and their withdrawal from School in Lagos State" - and presentation of same to the Lagos State House of Assembly for enactment into law. The Human Rights Education Project officer of the CHILDREN Project working in collaboration with ActionAid International Nigeria a retained consultant will develop the Bill, which will be widely circulated among members of the state House of Assembly and Executives.

4. Lobbying Group A lobby group of the CHILDREN Project and the ActionAid International Nigeria will be constituted to lobby the Legislature to pass the bill into Law. Their activities will include Media campaign in electronic and print media. There will be a phone-in program in radio and television in which the public will have opportunity to express their views on the desirability or otherwise of the proposed Bill.

Methodology

(a) Method of implementation

· The project proposes to strength an existing structure rather than build a new membership network to undertake to undertake Child Rights investigation and monitoring in Lagos State.

· It will create, equip and staff a new department directly responsible for implementing and coordinating the project activities.

· Training workshop for CHILDREN Project members and activists on Child Rights monitoring, investigation and reporting skills.

· Production of the Child Rights Monitor

· Production of Draft Bill - "A Bill To Prohibit Child Abuse, Refusal Of Parent To Send Children Of Primary School Age to and their withdrawal from School in Lagos State and Other Related Matters".

· Lobbying Group to lobby legislatures for the passage of the Bill into law

Evaluation

Part of the indicators of success will include the following:

Establishment of a new information/campaign department saddled with the responsibility of implementing the project and producing information and press releases on specific Child Rights cases in Lagos State.

The passage of the Bill into law in Lagos State.

Through answers to questionnaires to be administered on the participants after the workshop.

Regular reporting on project activities,

Regular progress and final narrative reports of the project by coordinator will be used as basis for evaluating project implementation. This will be taken vis-à-vis approved implementation plan, and correspondences with donor representatives.

Duration

The project is expected to last for 6 Months starting from August 2008.

Budget Outlay

1.Hiring of venue @ N50,000 x 3days N150,000.00

2.Honoraria for 5 resource persons @ N100,000 each N500,000.00

3.Honoraria for 3 consultants for the production of the Child Rights

training manual @ N100,000 each N300,000.00

4.Feeding of 150 participants at the three (3) days training workshop

@ N1,500 x 150 x 3 N675,000.00

5.Workshop bag and materials @ N300 x 150 N45,000.00

6.Transportation fare for 150 participants @ N5,000 each N750,000.00

7.Publication of 2000 copies of Child Rights training Manual

@ 200 per copy N400,000.00

8.Media Advocacy

i 10 slots of Phone-in radio programmes @ N5,000 each N50,000.00

ii 10 slots of television phone-in programmes @ N10,000 N100,000.00

9.Administrative cost N300,000.00

Total N3,270,000.00

Period covered by the Grant: August 2008 - February 2009

Amount of request: Three Million, Two Hundred and Seventy

Thousand Naira Only