Child rights awareness: ‘Activists need to educate reporters’

Civil society and child rights activists should provide reporters with literature to ensure accurate reporting.

LAHORE: The Child Rights Movement (CRM), on Tuesday, proposed new think-tanks comprising journalists and civil society activists.

These could meet regularly to discuss child related issues and report on them in a more comprehensive way, they said. This, they said, would force policy makers to pass laws and establish autonomous institutions focused on children issues. NGOs and associations working for childrens’ rights should also update reporters regularly on developments concerning children, said speakers at a workshop, Media Ethics for Reporting on Child Right Issues, organised by the Child Rights Movement (CRM) on Tuesday. Matiullah Jan moderated the workshop. SPARC’s Iftikhar Mubarik said most reporters could not hold policy makers accountable as they were ignorant about the international conventions that Pakistan had signed. He said civil society and child rights activists should provide reporters with literature to ensure accurate and current reporting. “The interaction with reporters shouldn’t be beat-reporter based, rather all journalists should be updated so they can raise this issue in their work,” said Imdad Naqvi, another child right activist. Mubarik stressed the need for trainings in how children who had been wronged should be interviewed. “A child who has been exploited or molested should be addressed in a certain manner so that he doesn’t feel harassed,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2012.