The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has
organised a two-day media dialogue in Enugu, capital of Enugu State, with
Online Publishers to discuss the convention on child rights which came into
force through the UN General Assembly's resolution 44/20 of 20 November, 1989.
The dialogue, which began Thursday and ending
Friday was put together by the child rights information bureau (RIB) of the
Federal Ministry of Information, collaborating with UNICEF).
There were 15 selected publishers of Online
newspapers from different parts of the country and representatives of major
conventional newspapers based in Enugu, as well as some university lecturers in
attendance.
A UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku,
kick-started the discussion by making a run-down of the contents of the
convention on the child rights which he said countries of the world signed
except the United States of America and Somalia.
According to Njoku, there are four key principles
of the Child Rights Convention, including non-discrimination, best interest of
the child, life survival and development as well as respecting the views of the
child.
He said that the provisions, which are universal,
indivisible and accountability, are inter-dependent and inter-related.
At the dialogue, Dr. Chikwendu Ogbonnaya, a public
policy advocacy also gave a lecture on special responsibility and public
interest in Online journalism practice: defining a public policy for online
journalism.
Also, Dr. Abigail Ogwezzy of the University of
Lagos gave a talk on perspectives of children's rights in current online
journalism practice in Nigeria while Akin Jimoh of UNICEF Nigeria would deliver
a lecture on children's right and online journalism practice in Nigeria:
setting an agenda for children.
The Publishers are expected to end the dialogue
looking collectively at the scoping online opportunities for child rights
advocacy as well as presenting group work.
The UNICEF Convention describes a child as every
human being below the age of eighteen years, unless under the law applicable to
the child, majority is attained earlier even as it ask the stakeholders to
respect the rights set forth in the convention.
These rights, the convention insists, should be
conferred in each child without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the
child's or his or her parent's or legal guardians race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin,
property, disability, birth or other statues.
UNICE's Convention urges state to take all
appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of
discrimination or punishment on the basis of status, activities, expressed
opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family
members.
Source: http://worldstagegroup.com
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