Bachpan Bachao Andolan

Bachpan Bachao Andolan (English: Save Childhood Movement) is an India-based movement campaigning for the rights of children. It was started in 1980 by Nobel Laureate Mr. Kailash Satyarthi. Its focus has centred on ending bonded labour, child labour and human trafficking, as well as demanding the right to education for all children. It has so far freed 85,000 children from servitude, including bonded labourers, and helped in their successful re-integration, rehabilitation and education.[1]

Purpose

The stated vision of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) is "to create a child friendly society, where all children are free from exploitation and receive free and quality education." It aims "to identify, liberate, rehabilitate and educate children in servitude through direct intervention, child and community participation, coalition building, consumer action, promoting ethical trade practices and mass gaming."[2]

History

BBA was formed in 1980 by Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for 2014, who was appalled by the plight of child slavery across South Asia. Child labour has been socially accepted and widely practised in the region for generations, being seen as a necessary outcome of poverty. BBA became the first organization in India to highlight the issue and spawned the wider South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS).

Strategy

The work of BBA takes three strands, being prevention, protection and rehabilitation.[3]

In trafficking and child labour cases requiring transit rehabilitation and other support through residential care, the rescued children find their new life at BBA's transit rehabilitation centres - Mukti Ashram, situated at the outskirts of Delhi and Bal Ashram, situated in Virat Nagar, Rajasthan. Mukti Ashram is an immediate shelter for the children who are rescued from Delhi and its surroundings. They are immediately provided with medical help, food, clothing, recreational facilities, sports, theater and counseling during their stay until the legal formalities are completed and they are repatriated and reunited with their families. On the other hand, children who do not have families to fall back upon find a new home at Bal Ashram. Here, Children stay for a longer duration, receive basic as well as formal education as well as vocational training which may help them earn their living when they grow up.

Public Interest Litigations : BBA works on policy and legislative changes through effectively implementing the legal process and approaching the Supreme Court of India or various High Courts for making and enforcing policies in favour of children. This includes a number of judgements/ orders including the recent orders:

  1. Upholding the Constitutional validity of Right to Education
  2. Prohibition of employment of children in Circuses
  3. Recovery of fines and cancellation/ sealing of establishments employing child labourers.
  4. Protection of girls being trafficked through unregulated placement agencies.

Campaigns

BBA has led the largest civil society initiative in the world against child labour in the form of the Global March Against Child Labour in 1998, leading to ILO Convention 182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour

One of the recent campaigns of BBA include:

Child Labour Free India Campaign: for an amendment in Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986 for total abolition on child labour till the age of 14 yrs., in line with ILO Convention 138.[7]

Right to Education Campaign:[8]

Child Domestic Labour campaign[9]

Mukti Caravan (campaign against child trafficking for forced labour)[10]

Missing Children Campaign: biggest ever research undertaken on missing children, resulting in Supreme Court issuing notice to all states and union territories on missing children.[11]

See also

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.