Children need to know their rights

United Nations Children's Fund Madhya Pradesh Field Office Chief Tania Goldner today stressed that children need to know about their rights and ''all of us'' as stakeholders are duty-bound to inform them and help them claim their rights. Dr Goldner was addressing a prize distribution ceremony at Jawahar Bal Bhawan here. The event was organised by Child Rights Observatory (CRO) to felicitate kids who participated in a painting and essay competition held in November on the issue of child rights. More than 200 participants were present, a release said. ''It is heartening to see children painting their thoughts on their own rights. For me you are all winners not only the ones who came first. Your participation and recognition of your rights makes you winners,'' she said. CRO President Nirmala Buch spoke on the need for child articipation and said that CRO organised this competition and is taking several other initiatives to involve kids.

UNICEF-supported Risk Reduction Project in MP

UNI, Bhopal : United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is supporting the Madhya Pradesh government and city-based Disaster Management Institute (DMI) in implementing a unique community-based Disaster Risk Reduction Project in ten districts of the state.

The project, which got under way in November 2008 and at present covers 100 villages across Guna, Mandsaur, Damoh, Dhar, Harda, Raisen, Sheopur, Satna, Chhindwara and Barwani, aims to cover 250 villages by 2010-end.

''It envisages reducing loss of life and related risks by making people self-resilient. This project is helping strengthen the community-coping mechanism through capacity-building at grassroots level,'' Dr Tania Goldner, Chief of UNICEF's Field Office for Madhya Pradesh, told UNI.

Being taken up on pilot basis, the project aims at building capacities at community level to manage safe havens while ensuring that basic services -- specially related to children and women (health, nutrition and education) -- are accessible, establishing community-based systems for ensuring protection of children and to facilitate preparation of district disaster management plans in the districts, the Project Plan document of the initiative said.

MP to launch missing children website

The Madhya Pradesh government's Women and Child Development (WCD) department is all set to launch a website for missing children in the state which could help in identifying and tracing them. "We are planning a website for the missing children, so that they could be clearly identified," the department's deputy director and Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) in-charge Mamta Pathak told media as per the reports, adding that the initiative would help to trace and rehabilitate missing children.

The ICPS will entail integration of all the 18 different schemes for the protection of child rights and security, which would now be implemented by a single department. UNICEF is assiting the state for  implementation of ICPS in the state. In addition to it other non-governmental organisations, and other departments of the state are helping in the same.The collection of data about missing children and the implementation the various schemes under an integrated ICPS has already been started with the help of National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) and other child rights agencies, she said.

Madhya Pradesh is the 6th state to sign a memorandum of understanding with the central government for the implementation of ICPS, Pathak said. ICPS is a centrally sponsored "umbrella scheme" for protection of child rights and security while woman and child department would be the nodal agency to implement it.

"It would go a long way in working for the cause of children as various schemes pertaining to protection and security of children will now be implemented by one department," Women and Child Development Commissioner Gulshan Bambra said.