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18 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2022
SUNDAY, November 20, 2022,
passed, rather quietly, in Nigeria,
though the world out there celebrated
the 2022 edition of World Children’s
Day. Yes, we do celebrate our own
Nigerian Children’s Day on May 27
every year, yet we still need to
respond to the universal day because
we are part of it.
The World Children’s Day, WCD,
which was established in 1954 as the
Universal Children’s Day, had a
humble, distant beginning. It was
founded as "Rose Day" on June 2,
1857, by Dr. Charles Leonard, the
pastor of the Universal Church of the
Redeemer in Massachusetts, USA.
The Republic of Turkey, under its
legendary President, Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, officially declared it a special
day in 1929.
When the UN General Assembly
adopted it under the mandate of the
United Nations Children’s Fund,
UNICEF, it also enacted the Universal
Marking World Children’s Day 2022
Declaration of the Rights of the Child,
which established the minimum basis
for the care and protection of the
child anywhere in the world.
The primary requirements under
this charter were: the child must be
given all it requires for normal
physical, material, and spiritual
development. A hungry child must
be fed; a sick child must be nursed; a
backward child must be helped; a
delinquent child must be reclaimed;
and the orphan must be provided for.
It also stressed that in times of
distress, the child must get the first
relief and be protected from every
form of exploitation. Also, the child
must be prepared to be able to earn a
livelihood in adulthood and
conditioned to acquire skills to be
able to serve fellow humans.
These rights were later developed,
and on November 20, 1989, the UN
General Assembly adopted the
Convention on the Rights of the
Child, CRC.
It was a compendium treaty of the
human rights of the child that covered
the social, political, economic, health,
and cultural rights of children to
prepare them as well-rounded future
leaders.
This charter has been followed as
closely as possible, especially in the
advanced Western world, where the
rights of children are extensively
secured by law. But the situation is
different in the backward nations.
These include Nigeria, where over 20
million children are out of school.
Many are orphaned by jihadist
terrorism, banditry and general
insecurity.
Child labour, street hawking, child
marriages, child trafficking, "baby
factories," and other heinous crimes
against children still prevail despite
the Child Rights Act, CRA, adopted
in 2003.
The Universal Children’s Day
politely` reminds us of our
obligations to develop policies and
programmes that will protect
Nigerian children, especially the girl
child, who is still culturally relegated.
For a better future, we must invest in
our children. If we keep neglecting
them, we are stoking a Hobbesian
future for our society.
OPINION
Women, quality of life and sustainable development
By FATIMA ALI BUSUGUMA
WOMEN are the pioneers of any
nation. The Nigerian culture
attaches great importance to women, who
comprise half of the world’s population.
According to a report by the UN Secretary
General, women account for 50 percent
of human resources, making them the
second-largest human resource after men
in terms of potential.
Women are the key to sustainable
development and quality of life in the
family. The variety of roles the women
assume in the family are those of wife,
leader, administrator, manager of family
income, and last but not least, the most
important, mother.
As a wife, a woman is a man’s helpmate,
partner, and comrade. She sacrifices her
personal pleasure and ambitions, sets the
standard of morality, relieves stress and
strain, on the husband, and maintains
peace and order in the household.
Thereby, she creates a necessary
environment for her male partner to think
more about the economic enlistment of
the family. She is the source of inspiration
for men's high endeavours and
worthwhile achievements in life.
She is by his side in all crises and shares
all of his successes and accomplishments.
Likewise, she is the person to whom he
turns for love, sympathy, understanding,
comfort, and recognition.
She is the symbol of purity, faithfulness,
submission, and devotion to her husband.
A well-ordered, disciplined household is
essential to normal family life. The
woman in the family assumes this
function. She is the chief executive of an
enterprise. She assigns duties among
family members according to their
interests and abilities, and provides
resources in-term of equipment and
materials to accomplish the job.
Furthermore, she is responsible for meal
preparation and serving, clothing
selection and care, laundering, and house
furnishing and maintenance. As an
administrator, she organises various
social functions in the family for social
development. She also acts as a director
of recreation. She plans various
recreational activities to meet the needs
of young and old members of the family.
The woman acts as the humble manager
of the family income. It is her
responsibility to secure the maximum
return from every penny spent. She always
prefers to prepare a surplus budget instead
of a deficit budget. When it comes to
spending money, she is very calculated
about her losses and gains. She distributes
judiciously the income among different
categories, such as necessities, comforts,
and luxuries.
The woman in the family also
contributes to the family income through
her own earning within or outside the
home. She has positive contribution to the
family income by the work. She herself
performs in the home and uses waste
products for productive purposes.
The whole burden of childbearing and
a greater part of the child rearing task are
carried out by the woman in the family.
She is primarily responsible for the child’s
habit of self-control, orderliness,
industriousness, theft, or honesty. Her
contacts with the child during the most
formative period of his development sets
up his behaviour pattern. She is thus
responsible for the maintenance of utmost
discipline in the family.
She is the child's first teacher.
Furthermore, she passes on her social
heritage to the child. It is from the mother
The mother is the central
personality of the home and
the family circle; all the
members turn to her for
sympathy, understanding, and
recognition
that the child learns the laws of the race,
the manner of men, moral code and ideals.
The mother, because of her intimate and
sustained contact with the child, she is able
to discover and nurture the child’s special
traits aptitudes and attitudes which
subsequently play a key role in the shaping
of his personality.
As a mother, she is the family health
officer. She is very much concerned about
the physical wellbeing of every member
of the family, the helpless infant, the sickly
child, the adolescent youth, the senescent
parent. She organises the home and its
activities in such a way so that each
member of the family has proper food,
adequate sleep and sufficient recreation.
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Not only that, but she made the home a
place of quite comfortable and
appropriate setting for the children
through her talent. Besides, she cultivates
taste in interior design and arrangement,
so that the home becomes an inviting,
restful and cheerful place.
The mother is the central personality of
the home and the family circle. All the
members turn to her for sympathy,
understanding, and recognition. A woman
devotes her time, labour and thought for
the welfare of the members of her family.
The woman performs the role of wife,
partner, organiser, administrator, director,
re-creator, disburser, economist, mother,
disciplinarian, teacher, health officer,
artist and queen in the family at the same
time. Apart from it, a woman plays a key
role in the socio-economic development
of the society.
They should act as social leaders,
speaking out against women's violence,
domestic and workplace exploitation,
dowry prohibition superstition, and other
social atrocities. They should be members
of religious institutions, delivering
spiritual messages to adolescent boys and
girls in order to eradicate juvenile
delinquency from society. Furthermore, it
is women who have sustained societal
growth and shaped the future of nations.
In the emerging complex social
scenario, women have a vital role to play
in different sectors. They can no longer be
considered mere harbingers of peace, but
are emerging as a source of power and a
symbol of progress.
•Busuguma, a corps member with
PRNigeria, wrote from Wuye