Eleventh Five Year Plan

208 Eleventh Five Year PlanCHALLENGES, STRATEGIES, ANDTHE ROAD AHEAD6.108 All strategies for Child Rights and Developmentin the Eleventh Plan must be cognizant of the slowingdecline in poverty, and an unsettling of traditional,‘pre-modern’ livelihoods and local economies. This hasconstrained the caring capacity of millions of familiesand impacted children. Cosmetic measures targetingonly children and not their milieu are therefore notenough to correct this situation.6.109 Successful integration of survival, development,protection, and participation is closely linked to allaspects of a child’s well being. Often, the same child isprone to malnutrition and illness, deprived of earlystimulation, is out-of-school, and more likely to beabused and exploited. An immunized child who is constantlybeaten will not be healthy; a school-goingchild taunted and abused for his or her ethnicity won’tenjoy a good learning environment; and an adolescentsold into prostitution will not be empowered to participatein and contribute to society. Sexual abuse andviolence in schools can be a hidden factor behind lowretention rates. Violence can be behind many of theunexplained injuries that are treated at health centres,or even the cause of long-term disability. These linkshave to be recognized to ensure a holistic approach tochild rights, particularly children’s right to protection.6.110 At the same time it is important to rememberthat while children have equal rights, their situationsare not uniform. Their needs and entitlements arearea-specific, group-specific, culture-specific, settingspecific,and age-specific and demand different sets ofinterventions. They live and struggle for growthand well-being in the contextual frame of who theyare and where they are located, and how that identityincludes or excludes them from social and State provisionsand benefits. While some children are in difficultcircumstances and have suffered violence, abuse,and exploitation, there are others who are not in anyof these adverse situations and yet need to be protectedin order to ensure that they remain within the socialsecurity net. It is critical that interventions destinedfor children do not ‘exclude’ anyone.6.111 In the light of the above, the following strategieswill be adopted during the Eleventh Plan to ensure thatevery child enjoys her childhood and all her rightswithout any fear and without the need to work:• Developing specific interventions to address malnutrition,neonatal, and infant mortality.• Creating child-friendly protective services.• Identifying the most vulnerable and marginalizedchildren and ensuring age and situation-specificinterventions.• Reviewing all legal provisions for children andundertaking necessary amendments based oninternational commitments.• Ensuring effective implementation of laws andpolices by personnel trained to work with children.• Establishing child impact as a core indicator ofEleventh Plan interventions, with special emphasison the status of the girl child.• Creating a protective environment for childrenthrough implementation of schemes and programmesbased on the best interest of the child. Someof the current initiatives only address the needsof children once they have fallen through the protectivenet. While these initiatives to identifysuch children and rehabilitate them are critical,there is an equal need for legislative changes andprogrammatic interventions, so that prevention isforegrounded and children grow up in a protectiveenvironment.• Undertaking a child rights review of all existingdevelopmental policies and plans to assess their impacton children and to ensure that children are notfurther marginalized.• Recognizing that crèches and day care are importantfor child development, empowerment ofwomen, and retention of girls in schools.• Ensuring survival of the girl child and her right tobe born. Shift to ‘lifecycle and capability approach’where the girl child’s contribution in economic andsocial terms is recognized.• Ensuring multi-pronged programme, focusingon preventing children from falling out of the protectivenet, ameliorative initiatives for childrenwho are already out of the protective net, and ensuringlong-term and sustainable rehabilitationby upgrading quality of services and addressingregional imbalances.