The
World Day Against Child Labour (June
12, 2005) was celebrated in India with
a Pankaj Udhas musical show, An Evening
Dedicated to Childhood (Ek Shaam Bachpan
Ke Naam), organised by Bachpan Bachao
Andolan (BBA), Global March core partner
in India. Pankaj Udhas, a noted ghazal
(musical) maestro, is also the Goodwill
Ambassador for BBA.
An
audience of more than three thousand
had gathered for the show. The guest
list included former Information and
Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad,
religious guru Sri Sudhanshu, among
many other notable Parliamentarians,
Academicians, Human Rights Activists
and Industrialists.
In
his opening note, Global March and BBA
Chairperson Kailash Satyarthi’s
relating his experience with Pao, a
Cambodian Child Core Marcher, a former
child prostitute during the physical
Global March said, “Pao asked
me, ‘Am I still a child?’
When I said yes, she broke down on my
shoulders and cried. There are 250 million
children like Pao across the world who
have lost a sense of their childhood.
We need to act now to restore their
childhood”.
Further,
Mr Satyarthi narrated how the world
for the first time took notice of the
power of child participation, when on
June 12, 1998, a strong group of 250
child and adult core marchers stormed
the well of ILO Headquarters in Geneva.
It was a first for children to be present
at the ILO, and this heralded the drafting
of the ILO Convention 182 on Worst Forms
of Child Labour. June 12, since 2002,
is being celebrated across the world
as the World Day Against Child Labour.
The
show went much beyond the traditional
purview of a fundraiser, into the realms
of resource mobilisation. It was a platform
to take the issue of child labour, into
the corporate working class, that had
not been targeted at such a large scale.
Reaching out to this untapped segment
of society as well as the corporate
sector is among one of the first of
its kind on the issue of child rights
in India.
