INDIA: Children and Governance - Holding the State Accountable

Summary: This report was compiled following an international colloquium on children and governance.

• HAQ timed this international colloquium on children and governance to coincide with the 20th year of reporting to UNCRC and 10 years of its own existence.
• The time was just right to run a checklist on the current State policies, programmes and practices for children to review its child-sensitivity and the inclusion of children in governance.
• Indian policymakers who addressed this session agreed to a deep deficit in basic rights for children in all almost all areas of governance.
• India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1992 but adherence to its principles in the country’s Constitution and in its policy and programmes remains an unfinished agenda.
• There is continued disempowerment of children. Today, they are fighting harder for survival, nutrition, health, education and representation and participation in governance.
• The mid-term appraisal and strategic review of child rights and protection in the Eleventh Plan can remap their entitlements and participation in governance and also push up fiscal allocations.
• The energies of the civil society should be harnessed to create systems and mechanisms that benefit children.
• The message of the introductory session addressed by Indian policymakers was both worrying and heartening.
• While State ability and will in governance for children is woefully inadequate, a public scrutiny of its performance through the use of tools, indicators and models can force it to become accountable.
• The consensus was that children’s future is here and now.