Child Rights and You America Inc. (CRY America)

Since its founding in 1995, Children’s Rights has used strategic litigation, advocacy and public education to reform child welfare systems and improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of children across the USA.
Children’s Rights’ work is focused on ensuring that child welfare systems actually do what they are legally required to do: protect children. Through litigation and policy initiatives, the organization identifies failing and dangerous systems throughout the U.S. and promotes changes that will improve children’s lives.
Children’s Rights goes to court to establish the rights of children to be protected from maltreatment and raised in safe, healthy, permanent homes-and to secure court orders that mandate top-to-bottom reform of the child welfare systems that violate these rights. The organization’s legal campaigns force open the doors of systems that lack the transparency and accountability necessary to identify and fix problems that often have plagued them for many years.

IMPACT
Children’s Rights has won landmark victories affecting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children in more than a dozen states. Nationwide reform campaigns have secured billions of dollars in additional child welfare funding and initiated improvements to ensure that those funds are spent more effectively.
Some recent examples of Children’s Rights’ impact include:
In MILWAUKEE, abuse in foster care has hit a historic low. The rate of maltreatment in care has been reduced more than tenfold, from 2.4% in 2000 to .15% in 2013. Allegations of abuse and neglect that used to sit for months are now investigated within days.
In CONNECTICUT, children are being adopted at a faster rate. The state has nearly tripled the percentage of children who had their adoptions finalized within two years, from only 11.1% in 1999 to 32.8% in 2013.
When Children’s Rights first took action in metropolitan ATLANTA in 2002, children in foster care often went six months or more without caseworkers visiting their homes. By 2013, caseworkers made well over 95% of required monthly visits to children.

CRY America’s grant to Children’s Rights in 2016-2017 will be directed towards general operating expenses to enable the organization to significantly improve its ability to defend the rights of neglected and abused children and to enable sustainable systemic changes through need based litigation.

Project Background:
SANLAAP was formally registered under societies registration act in the year of 1989. SANLAAP is now known even outside of India for its work related to changing situations of many children and young women who were trafficked within their own country and beyond borders for commercial sexual abuse and violence. Initially its main focus was to work for girl children and women exploited in sex trafficking industry. Later on SANLAAP decided to involve in policy advocacy initiatives for protection of children. It has four core areas of work and accordingly designs its program under four broad areas such as:
▪ Prevention of trafficking, especially for commercial sexual exploitation of women & children.
▪ Prevention of second generation prostitution through facilitating services for women in need, and capacity building of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) emerging to work on child protection and welfare of children and women rescued / escaped from violence or trafficking.
▪ Reintegration and mainstreaming of trafficking survivors.
▪ Advocacy on issues related to rights of the child.

Problem Statement:
In the state of West Bengal issues of child protection, especially trafficking and child marriage assumes enormous proportion due to the geographical location of the state, having porous international border with mountain locked Nepal & Bhutan in north, riverine Bangladesh in east and seas in south. The state is highly vulnerable to inter-state and cross border trafficking of children and women by unscrupulous elements. The child protection issues are also made severe by many local socio-economic factors. Considering and comparing the rural population’s per capita income with that of urban, the former with limited earning capacity in poverty situation makes people, especially girl child and women, susceptible to traffickers. Many guardians look at children as a source to supplement the family income and hardly think of issues like importance of education for children, gender discrimination, unsafe migration without sufficient information and the perils of sending a child for work to unknown destinations which effectively assists in commissioning offence of trafficking. Children in the state are trafficked primarily for labor and sexual exploitation. Accordingly to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 44% of victims of trafficking were associated with the state of West Bengal, nearly 75% of them were under the age of 18 years and 85% of them were women. Similarly, nearly 80% of the victims of trafficking rescued were under 18 years age and over 83% were women. However, the effective judicial process is insignificant as can be understood from conviction of only 11 person out of 1,795 charge sheeted against arrest of 1,847. On the other hand court had acquitted 224 people. Hardly 30% cases gets charge sheets filled in low crime reporting scenario and conviction rate is less than 10% according to the same report. It amplifies the fact that access to justice for trafficked survivors is an area that needs to be seriously addressed. The non-engagement of the survivors in the entire judiciary process results in absence of ownership in the process which results in children looking at the court procedures as a burden.

Marriage has been one of the guises for trafficking. About 54% minor girls in West Bengal get married before the legal age of marriage as per DLHS 2007-08. The vulnerability of the guardians and the girl are exploited by the traffickers. Social customs, tradition, ignorance, poverty and security for the girl perpetuate child marriage over the generations, impeding the development of the girl child. Limitations have been observed among both the duty bearers and right holders. The laws are inadequate, which are further weakened by ineffective enforcement by untrained functionaries at different level. The ineffective juvenile justice system, lack of convergence among the existing social protection schemes, inadequate budgetary provision, lack of provision of rehabilitation of the rescued children, minimal prosecution, procedural delays in prosecution play their part in perpetuating the injustice against children. The patriarchal values, socio-cultural acceptance of child marriage, diverse socio-cultural and economic conditions, lack of access to education, lack of job opportunity and livelihood insecurity, lack of awareness of community on the redressing mechanism and lack of information on available systems to address the issue, limitations of RTE Act to provide free education to children up to the age of 18 years, impact of globalization and modernization resulting a dream of having a better and secure life among the adolescents are the bedrock on which the children had been becoming victims of trafficking and child marriage. Children growing up in the red light areas of Kolkata are vulnerable to a host of child rights violations, stigma and discrimination which often renders them to be reliant on the red light economy on the rebound. The absence of involvement of the urban governance structures for addressing the issues of child protection through convergence and planning results in worsening of the situation of violations.

Objective:
1.Ensure full retention in schools.
2. Change in behavioral pattern of 45 youth who are vulnerable to drop out from school would lead to increased retention in schools; youth groups would be functional to act as vigilant group for identifying vulnerable children in the community – towards creating a safer environment
3. Preventive Approach: Introduction of Digital Medium in Prevention and Capacity Building with school students engaged through Sanlaap’s programmes in South and North 24 Parganas
4. Change in Children’s perception about Police from fear to protectors developed through greater interaction and participation.
5. Prosecution & Rehabilitation and Reintegration: Institutionalization of good practices on prosecution, rehabilitation & reintegration related experiences by government departments
6. Developing a learning platform for CRY partners working on trafficking
7. Functional youth groups who can act as vigilant group for identifying vulnerable children in the community and help children in need with adult supervision – in creating safer environment