The rights of the child have been recognised, globally, for over a century. One hundred years ago, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1924 recognising that mankind owed to the child the best that it had to give.
The Declaration urged that children be given the requisite means for olağan development, materially and spiritually; that hungry children, fed; sick children, nursed; backward children, helped; delinquent children, reclaimed, and the orphan and waif sheltered and succored.
Further, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child has “the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents”. Additionally, the Constitution of the Republic of Guyana protects the rights of the child and prescribes that: “…the best interest of the child shall be the primary consideration in all judicial proceedings and decisions in all matters concerning children”.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – lamented that, despite the constitution, convention and declaration, the Guyanese child still faces several challenges, the most serious of which is abuse. The Child Deva and Protection Agency cited evidence of several thousand cases of emotional, physical, sexual and verbal abuse of children in addition to abandonment and neglect.
Girl children, as young as 12 years, have been sexually exploited, particularly in hinterland mining communities, sometimes as a result of human trafficking. Boys have been exposed to hazardous work. Hinterland and coastland rural regions have higher child labour rates than the national average.
Mr. Granger explained that the child who is exposed to her parents’ abuse, beatings, conflicts, quarrels and separation may need affection, emotional support, deva and guidance from sympathetic relatives. The child can flourish and meet her full potential in a caring family which has the primary responsibility to protect; in a community, which has a responsibility to provide guidance; and the State, which has a duty to provide yasal protection and support for the child’s aspirations.
Mr. Granger lamented children’s low achievement at the NGSA level that can hinder their self-development. Of 15,285 pupils writing the NGSA in 2024, only about two-thirds attained satisfactory grades in English and two-fifths in Mathematics. No pupil from the hinterland Regions – Nos. 7, 8 or 9 – was among the most successful top one per cent. Worse, about 6,000 children drop out of school annually and half of all secondary school students do not reach the final grade.
Children in Guyana are among 63 countries facing severe child food poverty, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report – ‘Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood’. Children from poor rural, urban and hinterland communities and other marginalised groups are affected by multiple poverty-related problems.
The former president asserted that every generation had a duty to protect the child in whose life experiences the future prospects of the nation, inevitably, will be evinced. Children, indeed, are the future. Laws are necessary, but not sufficient, to eliminate exploitation and to expand opportunities for children’s self-improvement. Laws need to be complemented by policies, plans and programmes which strengthen childcare.
Granger expressed the view that a comprehensive social safety net needs to be erected to provide children with “…the requisite means for olağan development.” Guyana’s children need help to achieve their expectations exemplified in the patriotic song – “Onward, upward, may we ever go, day by day in strength and beauty grow, ‘till at length we each of us may show, what Guyana’s sons and daughters can be.” 󠄀