As rightly said, Children’s rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.
EmpowerHuman is working on Child Rights and Labour for the last six years in Delhi and NCR for keeping the children safe in conflict and crisis and now we are into Rescue and Rehabilitation. EmpowerHuman ensures to work on the capacity for autonomous action to the enforcement of children being physically, mentally and emotionally free from abuse.
Background of the project:
India, keeping its commitment to international humanitarian law, ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1992. As per Census 2011, more than 3 crore children (between the ages of 5-18 years) are working in the country. These children are mostly trafficked by the agents through the use of deception, fraud, coercion on their socio-economically weak families.
Additionally, difficult conditions in their native places also force families and their children to migrate and find odd jobs in other destination states such as Haryana and Delhi NCR in the failure of outreach of social security program by the Government.
Rescue of the Child Labour
Area Identification: Based on primary and secondary data and field research, we focus on local industry based areas and businesses freely exploiting children as child labour and bonded labour.
Target Identification: Companies and businesses promoting child labour in their organisation were targeted for raids to rescue the child labours based on the systematic field identification of such companies.
Identification of children: EmpowerHuman capitalizes on its rapport and goodwill built in the associated communities to ensure children under distress are identified by encouraging the people to come forward with information so that they can be removed from their conditions of exploitation subsequently. EmpowerHuman had also undertaken such identifications through its team of trained personnel on the ground.
Advocacy: Advocacy with the concerned state department official, Child Welfare Committee, labour department, DM, SDM.
Task Force Formation: A task force was formed to rescue children labours consisting of members and representatives from EmpowerHuman, SDM, DM, the Labour department, Home Guard and Local police.
Rescue of the child labours: Task Force strategically rescue the child labour and bring them to the safe zone. This involves quick action, covering the area, sealing off the factory and FIR Against the employer.
Detailed explanation: Upon identification, complaints were filed with Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) such as Police, Labour, District Administration, and District Task Force against Child Labour (DTF), etc. to take requisite action. Subsequently, rescue operations were conducted in collaboration with concerned authorities as per standard procedures to remove the children from their difficult situations like forced labour, domestic work, commercial sex exploitation and others.
Registration of cases of crimes against children: EmpowerHuman, by creating a strong on-ground network of sensitized communities towards child rights, ensure that children and families are empowered to come forward to report crimes against children.
Organizing legal camps: EmpowerHuman aims to create a child-sensitive environment in its associated communities. Towards this end, EmpowerHuman organizes legal camps in collaboration with State Legal Services Authority (SLSA) and District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) to generate awareness about child rights and provide an enabling platform to families to report cases of crimes against children.
Awareness Workshop For the community: EmpowerHuman organizes Awareness Workshop in the community to raise awareness for child safety. Child rights, Child Safety and Law and rescue procedures will be covered in this session.
Rehabilitation of the rescued children
Issuance of Release Certificate (RC): RC is issued by the District Administration to enable the rescued children and their families to access schemes for their rehabilitation and other social security schemes. In this regard, EmpowerHuman coordinates with all concerned authorities and government departments to ensure all rescued children are issued with RC for their rehabilitation.
Counselling of the released child labour: An one on one counselling and group counselling is organized by EmpowerHuman for all the children rescued and released child labour. This counselling aims to comfort them and bring that motivation to start their life afresh.
Gathering the Information: EmpowerHuman needs to take out the information and also verified it from our end to rehab the rescued children .one child is considered to be rehab when he goes back to his village to his parents.
Identification of the Parents: On the basis of the collected information, our team contacted the parents of such rescued children directly or indirectly through the child welfare committee and other legal sources.
Settling the children at their home: post the identification of their parents and home town, all the rescued children are arranged to meet their parents and settle with them at their respected place. Children will also be entitled to compensation on the basis of the Release certificate issued to them by the concerned department. This all will help the child once again to live their lives in peace and harmony with their parents.
Back Wages: Post raid, after consultation with the labour department and CWC, a maximum of six months of back wages will be recovered by the employers and all the drafts submitted to the labour department later were deposited to child