Say Yes, Winter 2005: In This Issue

BY THE CHILDREN,
FOR THE CHILDREN

Every year on the anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK) runs the annual National Children’s Forum in Turkey with UNICEF support.

This year, delegates from Turkey’s eighty-one provinces gathered at the Fifth National Children’s Forum in November 2004 to discuss the theme of Children Under Threat of Violence.

Demet Kurtbaş,19, from Kars, has attended every forum since the first one in 2000. This time attending the Fifth Children’s Forum as a guest speaker she said that:

I could say that I’ve grown up with children’s rights. Talking about the issue we understand that the child also is an individual. He or she has their own ideas and I think that they need to be listened to.

There is a break in communication when children in this forum go back home. SHÇEK and UNICEF could help with this.

I think it would be a good idea to establish an open platform of communication between the delegates. Then children will be much more able to act on what they have gained from the forum afterwards. They can share their experiences and achievements with one another.

We spoke to many of the delegates during the course of their activities at the Forum, asking each of them three basic questions:

• What do you understand by children’s rights?
• What problems do you encounter as a child in your daily life?
• What would you most like to change for children in the world?

One child currently attending primary school said:

I’m going to criticise our education system here in Turkey but I know that the situation is worse in some other countries. For example, children in Iraq have no rights. They are in the middle of a war at the moment -- being bombed. We don’t know what children’s rights are -- either here or in Iraq.

Another gave us the title of this Winter issue when she said that:

Themes such as freedom, love, tolerance, understanding and shelter remind us of children’s rights. Children’s rights are important because children are important: they can become either good people or bad people for their country. Please listen to the voices of children.

This issue of Say Yes is devoted to the delegates replies -- by turns touching in their concern for other children or startlingly critical of adult behaviour towards them -- but always thought-provoking.

Read more on the following pages.

POVERTY, CONFLICT
AND HIV/AIDS

Speaking at the launch of UNICEF’s annual flagship report, The State of the World’s Children 2005, in London in December, Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that:

Poverty doesn’t come from nowhere. When half the world’s children are growing up hungry and unhealthy, when schools have become targets and whole villages emptied by AIDS, we’ve failed to deliver on the promise of childhood.

Bellamy was emphasising the focus of this year’s report on the global threats of poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS under the the theme of Childhood Under Threat. The report argues that advances made in children’s rights over recent decades, such as reductions in child mortality, increased enrolment in primary education and lower numbers of orphans, are at risk of reversal from the these key threats.

At the launch of the report in Ankara, Mrs Emine Erdoğan spoke out forcefully in support of the child’s right to grow up in peace and security anywhere in the world:

Having read this report, I am profoundly concerned. It says that a billion children are mortally threatened. We need to do something about this. We should begin with education and girls’ education is crucial. All the world’s children are our children.

A number of children also spoke about Childhood Under Threat of Violence. Çanser Karadaş, 16, pointed out that violence is cruelty: the use of force in place of conviction and agreement. Zeynep Koç, 17, said that education, beginning with the parents, is a must to get children off the streets. Ramazan Etyemez, 17, observed that although street violence has been very much on the agenda recently, domestic violence is more common and should not be ignored. Cansu Aydın,16, noted that some have computers at home yet others don’t even have bread to eat

Read State of the World’s Children 2005 online from UNICEF headquarters in New York.