Friday, September 29, 2006 Oledan: Beyond barriers By Radzini Oledan
POSITIVE changes are starting to show in our community. This time, highlighting the active involvement of children and youth in program implementation which seeks to address existing disparities in ensuring an environment where every child are able to develop themselves in the best way possible, where everyone works for the realization of their rights and where their views are encouraged and in fact, solicited in the policy level down to the barangays.
From among all provinces and cities under the Sixth Countrywide Programme of Children (CPC VI), Davao is the only area which was able to organize and sustain a Children and Youth Communicators' Team. Composed of children and youth from centers, urban poor communities, out of school and in school they have come together to have their voices heard, especially on programs and development interventions that matters to their young lives.
These are the same group of children whom the CPC 6 Communication Team trained on the framework on Child and Youth Participation, and later on Video Production for and by Children. The CPC program operates on the principle that gives importance on children and young people as individuals whose dignity must be respected and who are not only entitled to express their views on all matters that affect them but also to have those views taken seriously.
Article 12 of the Convention makes it clear that participation is a substantive right of all children and young people. However, democratic participation is not an end in itself; as a procedural right, it represents the means through which they may take part in and influence processes, decisions and activities in order to achieve justice, influence outcomes, expose abuses of power and realize their rights.
The Child and Youth Communicators' Team, aged 9-16, were able to express their views and opinions through their poetry and song composition, which they have recorded and developed into a music video on the current realities besetting the children and youth. Their song echoes hope and inspiration.
The demand for recognition of the right of young people to be heard, to have their views given serious consideration, and to play an active role in promoting their own best interests is far from respected. It remains to be a challenge in the community and even in the programme level where traditional attitudes towards young people maintains the subordinate level of youth in relationship with adults.
For instance, a commitment to respecting the participatory rights of young people is incompatible with the age-old propensity of adults to take decisions concerning young people in their absence. There is still a need for those who are in the almost 30 years CPC Programme to acknowledge young people as protagonists in the exercise of their own rights and as an active agents rather than mere recipients of programs.
Some of these implementers are far from convinces that harnessing the active involvement of youth represents an effective strategy for achieving better outcomes. For the 2007 Annual Work Plan, the Communication program will have to work on four components: child and youth participation, communication for behavior change, goals monitoring and advocacy.
It will continue to incorporate strategies to involve more youth especially in the identified 40 disparity areas in Davao City -- looking at it as a strategy for child protection and development. Their voices will have to push changes in the traditional concept which continually undermine the efforts of children and youth to work for betterment of their lives.
What were the lessons learned in this engagement? That some adults in position of authority over children and young people can and do abuse their power. The cultural assumption that young people must not challenge their elders or express their views, even when their rights are being violated, has increased their vulnerability to dangers such as economic exploitation, military recruitment and forced participation in the sex trade. By now, it is well documented that many millions of children and young people in countries around the globe are both physically and sexually abused within their own families and even trusted adults.
Actions detrimental to the well being of young people occur not only through deliberate abuse or neglect. Across the spectrum, adults have been responsible for decisions, policies and actions that have been inappropriate and sometimes actively harmful to young people, even when the underlying intention has been to promote their welfare.
These actions are characterized by a consistent failure to consult or involve young people themselves. Evidence is not hard to come by; it is not uncommon to find cases in which young people are placed in large institutions that give insufficient attention to their emotional and psychological well-being, children from different communities are segregated and young people are institutionalized in attempts to remove them from the streets. There is growing recognition that young people are more harmed than helped by these practices, which have all been, and in many instances continue to be, justified by adults, while the views of young people themselves have gone unheard.
If young people are not involved in the development of the laws, policies and programs that affect them, even well-intentioned actions on the part of adults will often fail to protect their best interests. If their interests are frequently overlooked in public policy, then we effectively silence them.
Public spaces are not to be owned by adults, with young people's presence representing an unwanted intrusion. The CPC Programme is not for adults speaking in behalf of the children nor is it to be a business of those who get funding for their own program with little if any, representation nor participation of the children and youth themselves.
It has to go beyond personalities who have felt ownership over a program which they handled for more than 20 years. It has to become a program that genuinely places children at the center of its agenda.
