Childhood, interrupted
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Children who lost their parents to covid are being put to work although there is an easy way to send them to the classroom
When the toss-up is between books and being a breadwinner, the latter wins. Many children who lost their fathers to covid have been forced to take up jobs, along with their mothers, to survive. Child rights activists are trying to safeguard the rights of a child to education, a constitutional right.
After Monisha (name changed) lost her husband, the lone earning member of their family, she and her 13-year-old daughter were forced to look for work to support her in-laws and her younger daughter. “My husband was working in a small eatery and died in May due to covid. I haven’t paid school fees since last year and with no income, it is becoming difficult to run the house. I started working as a domestic help and my eldest daughter joined me. I know she is a child but I have no option,” said Monisha.
India’s child victims of COVID-19 | Child Rights
Last year, Shyam , 17, became one of the thousands of children in danger of living on the streets of India.
Shyam’s father had abandoned his family in Gudhiyari – a village in Raipur in Chhattisgarh state – eight years earlier. Shyam’s older brother, Gopi, who was 16 at the time, had turned to alcohol to cope, subsequently becoming violent towards their mother, 47-year-old Kishori .
To protect her and help support the family, Shyam dropped out of school when he was 10 and worked odd jobs as a dishwasher. But, unable to bear the stress and violence at home, he ran away in February 2020, in the hope of reaching Mumbai.
Activists in Karnataka fear child marriages may go unnoticed during lockdown
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Amid lockdown, weddings may be restricted to houses
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Amid lockdown, weddings may be restricted to houses
Last year, as the pandemic took grip of the world, and India went into a lockdown, child rights activists were alarmed to see a slew of child marriages being reported in Karnataka. Now, with yet another lockdown in place, and this time weddings being restricted to houses due to tough guidelines, there are fears of child marriages going unnoticed.
Fr. Antony Sebastian, chairperson of the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR), told