Bangladesh

Listen to Children's Voices

The purpose of this project is to promote children’s freedom of expression and participation and to prepare adults to be willing to share information and power and develop new kinds of relationships and/or partnerships with children and young people.

Children have the right to express their views individually and collectively on all issues affecting them, and to have their views taken into account. The cultural context and the low status of children in Bangladeshi society means children voices are rarely heard, or when they do speak their views are not taken seriously.

The concept of the Child Parliament stems from experiential learning from Save the Children Australia’s Child Access to Rights through Development (CARD Project). Since 1995 Save the Children Australia has been working in the Tangail district with a target group of 50,000 children. This model has evolved over time and now successfully creates opportunities for children and young people to raise their voices and ensure participation in matters that affect them. Children’s voices are heard through Child Journalism, Child Parliament, and Public Hearings with duty bearers. This project capitalises on the Child Parliament component and scales it up to the national level to achieve greater benefits to children across the country. The impetus for this project was a strong desire to increase the opportunities for children’s participation and raise their voices at various levels by sending child representatives from all districts of Bangladesh.

The Child Parliament is a unique forum for children’s voices to be heard in Bangladesh. It represents significant progress for children’s rights with children understanding, engaging and taking responsibility for issues that affect them. In the first Child Parliament session under this project, children put forward proposals on education, health and other child-related issues to members of parliament for consideration in the national budget of the next fiscal year at a roundtable. The proposals included supplying textbooks free of charge, other educational items at subsidised rates, ensuring proper teaching and a ban on physical torture in classrooms. They urged the authorities concerned to double its funding allocation to the health sector and end discrimination towards children in hospitals and health care centres and to provide free treatment to the disabled children.

Prominent Bangladeshi economist, Dr Atiur Rahman, recently commented that "Such discussion on budget by children is rare in the world, and it is important for democratisation".

Since the first sitting of Child Parliament in 2003, five sessions have been held. Support is given to the Parliament by the National Children’s Task Force (NCTF), a group of more than 4000 children who monitor the child rights situation in each of the 64 districts of Bangladesh and who are supported by SCA’s Listen to Children’s Voices team. Among a variety of advocacy activites, the NCTF produce a quarterly newsletter in each district, reporting on child rights issues and local children’s news which is distributed to children, newspapers, duty bearers and other NCTF district committees.

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