Details of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights's Annual Report Years 2001 - 2002. HAQ: Center for Child Rights B1/2, Ground Floor, Malviya Nagar New Delhi - 110017 Tel: +91-26677412,26673599 Fax: +91-26674688 Website: www.haqcrc.org FaceBook Page: https://www.facebook.com/HaqCentreForChildRights

1. ANNUAL REPORT
April 2001-March 2002
Moving ahead with the objective of mainstreaming child rights into all
developmental efforts, in the last one year HAQ has undertaken various
research, documentation, training, public education and advocacy
programmes. Our role as a resource centre cum support base has been
strengthened over the years, especially through interventions on critical
child rights concerns such as children and budgets, child trafficking,
children and housing etc.
In terms of both work and infrastructure HAQ has witnessed an
expansion that poses a far greater challenge of living up to the
expectations arising there from. To be able to throw light on how we have
been trying to fulfil our aims and objectives, a documentation of the
activities undertaken in the last year follows.
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION
STATE OF INDIA’S CHILDREN - A STATUS REPORT (ONGOING)
HAQ is in the midst of preparing a status report on India’s children.
This venture has received support from the Development Section of
the Royal Norwegian Embassy. Together with the decadal analysis of
the Union Budget, it will provide a picture of children in the last
decade. It will be a compilation of papers by experts and will be ready
by June 2002.
EVALUATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE JAHANGIRPURI
SCHOOL PROJECT OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, DELHI
UNIVERSITY. [ONGOING]
Universalisation of Elementary Education has been one of HAQ’s
important areas of concern. An opportunity to look into an experiment

2. directed at ensuring access to education and quality education for all
children came to HAQ when we undertook the evaluation and
documentation of the ‘Jahangirpuri School Project’ (JSP) of
Department of Education, Delhi University. JSP is a being carried out
in the Jahangirpuri slum area since 1995 as part of the Lokshala
concept of BGVJ.
CHILDREN AND RIGHT TO HOUSING. 2001-2002
Although, right to housing has come to be universally recognised as a
basic Human Right, time and again children’s right to housing is
being violated. Therefore, various groups across the world are working
on children and their housing rights. HAQ has preparing a resource
book on children’s right to housing in collaboration with the Land and
Housing Rights Committee - Habitat International Coalition. This
resource book will be useful for policy makers, planners, child rights
activists and housing rights activists. It has already been pre-tested
with children and a few NGO activists from Nepal and Bhutan, during
a workshop held in Kathmandu in November 2001. The resource book
is now in its final stages of editing and will be printed soon to enable
us to take it to the UN General Assembly Special Session on children
being held in New York from 8th May 2002.
SOUTH ASIA REPORT ON COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
OF CHILDREN AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE- FOR THE SECOND
WORLD CONGRESS AGAINST COMMERCIAL SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN. October-December 2001
HAQ was asked by UNICEF-ROSA, Kathmandu to prepare the South
Asia Report on Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Child Sexual
Abuse. Accordingly, a draft report was prepared and presented by
HAQ in Dhaka during a regional consultation for the 2nd World
Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. Based on
the comments received from the various governments, NGOs and
child participants, a strategy document was prepared, which formed
part of the final report that reached the Second World Congress on
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Yokohama in
December 2001.
UNDERSTANDING BUDGETS FROM A CHILD RIGHTS
PERSPECTIVE. July 2000-September 2001
This study began in July 2000 and was launched during a public
function on 11 September 2001. The report and its findings have been
shared with a wide range of interested persons, especially the
Parliamentarians. A latest update on children and budgets based on

3. the recent budget presented by the Finance Minister Sh. Yashwant
Sinha has been also been prepared for wider circulation.
CHILD RIGHTS IN INDIA – A BACKGROUNDER. May-June 2001
Info–change, a communications group based in Pune has launched a
website www.infochangeindia.org which is an Internet site on
Development. HAQ has prepared the background document on Child
Rights in India. This website is aimed at the general public who may
be interested in these issues.
CHILD PROTECTION IN SOUTH ASIA. May-June 2001
The UNICEF regional office in Nepal is bringing out an Atlas on
Children in South Asia. HAQ’s contribution in it has been the chapter
on child protection. Targeted at the youth, the atlas is designed to be
a key advocacy tool for UNICEF in South Asia and a contribution to
the Global Movement for Children.
TRAINING
Public Education Programme on Child Rights and Child
Protection through Creative Art and Drama. September 2001 –
April 2002.
HAQ has been involved in the Public Education Programme on Child
Rights and Child Protection undertaken by the British Council in the
schools of Punjab, Delhi and Jammu. The project sought to bring
awareness on child rights issues through creative art and drama.
Besides giving inputs in the art component of the project, HAQ is also
involved in the documentation of the entire event.
Through this project, HAQ was able to share the UN Convention on
the Rights of the Child with children and teachers from various
schools and NGOs of Punjab, Delhi and Jammu as well as with the
inmates of Nirmal Chhaya, a Government Girls home in Delhi. The
entire effort of one year concluded with an ‘Art and Drama festival’
held in the British Council between 2-7 April 2002. As part of this
festival, the voices of children were put forth through an exhibition of
13 posters and two canvasses.

4. Child Rights training organised by YWCA, New Delhi. February,
2002.
HAQ was invited to co-facilitate a workshop on child rights – girl child,
trafficking and education, at the 26th National Convention of the
YWCA, with Razia Ismail of Women’s Coalition and Vandana Prasad of
Forces. The workshop helped the YWCA delegates understand the
critical issue of child rights and develop strategies to bring about
change as well as draw up their plan of action for the next
quadrennium.
Training on Monitoring and Reporting on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights. Cambodia. January, 2002.
Ms. Enakshi Ganguly Thukral was invited as a resource person for a
training programme for approximately 30 members of the Civil Society
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The focus of the
programme was monitoring and reporting on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights. The programme was organised by ADHOC and the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Phnom Penh,
Cambodia. Ms. Thukral also undertook a training session on using
budget analysis as a tool for monitoring implementation of economic,
social and cultural rights.
Training session on children and housing rights. November 2001.
A two-day training workshop was jointly organised by the Habitat
International Coalition and CWIN, Nepal, for Nepalese and Bhutanese
NGOs and children to educate them on how to include the issue of
children’s housing rights in the monitoring process of CRC work in
their country. HAQ was one of the resource persons for the workshop,
where it used the draft on the children and housing resource book
that is being finalised, both to impart relevant information and
generate a discussion on the issue as well as to test the information
contained therein.
Child Rights Training for Students participating in the AISEC
Programme. November 2001. HAQ and Women’s Coalition as
members of the India Alliance on Child Rights, jointly undertook a
session on child rights with a group of students from AISEC
programme, which is an international student’s exchange programme.

5. Gender and Child Rights training for the trainee teachers from
the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs), SCERT,
Government of Delhi. October 2001.
HAQ has always been a resource person for various gender and child
rights training programmes organised by the State Centre for
Educational Research (SCERT). This was also one such programme
for the DIET trainee teachers.
Training in Budget Analysis. July 2001.
The Indian Council for Welfare, Tamil Nadu sent three representatives
to the HAQ office for training in budget analysis in July 2001. They are
currently in the process of analysing the State Budget.
Child Rights Training for Prinicpals of Sarvodaya Schools in Delhi
June-July 2001.
Following the need for developing a child rights perspective among
those working for children, especially among teachers, in June 2001
HAQ was invited by the State Centre for Educational Research
(SCERT) to undertake training in Child Rights for the heads of all
Sarvodaya Schools in Delhi.
ADVOCACY
Children’s Budget. [Ongoing]
Dialogue with the members of parliament and government officials to
bring children and budgets into the mainstream agenda has been one
of the major advocacy efforts undertaken by HAQ in the last one year.
This is a continuous effort as HAQ moves on to set up a core group of
Parliamentarians and policy makers in future to ensure that
children’s concerns find a place in national debates and on the
country’s political agenda. The Department of Women and Child
Development, Ministry of Human Rights Development, Government of
India had approached HAQ in November last year for inputs into their
attempt at a Gender Budget Analysis.
HAQ’s decadal analysis of the Union Budget from a child rights
perspective has been circulated and used by ongoing campaigns such
as the Campaign against Child Labour, groups involved in pre-budget
advocacy such as PRAYAS, and others across the country. HAQ was
invited by the Union Minister of State for Human Resource

6. Development, Department of Women and Child, for a pre-budget
discussion and was part of the delegation led by the minister that met
the Finance Minister on 13th of February 2002. Recently, excerpts
from the study relating to the financial commitment to the girl child
were compiled together for three networks – BJVJ, FORCES, INDIA
ALIANCE FOR CHILD RIGHTS, who have jointly filed a petition with
the National Commission for Women on the status of the girl child in
India.
National Workshop on Children in Armed Conflict. January 2002.
This was the first national workshop on children in armed conflict
held in January 2002 in Shillong. It was organised by the NGO Task
Force, of which HAQ was a member. Ms. Enakshi Ganguly Thukral
presented a paper addressing educational needs of children in armed
conflict from HAQ. Presently HAQ is a core group member of the NGO
Task Force.
UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS). Third
Preparatory Committee Meeting. June 2001.
HAQ has been involved in the discussions leading up to the
forthcoming Special Session of the UN General Assembly on child
rights in May 2002. We were one of the Indian NGOs to have attended
the substantive session of the Preparatory Committee of the UN
General Assembly Special Session on children. HAQ is part of an
informal alliance (India Alliance on Child Rights) of NGOs and
individuals who has worked on the draft outcome document that is
being discussed by the governments for ratification at the UNGASS.
We are also part of the South Asia Caucus and the larger
international child rights caucus that is undertaking discussions and
dialoguing with the governments.
A HAQ representative attended the third Preparatory Meeting in June
2001 and was to attend the final session, which has now been
postponed to May 2002, following the WTC tragedy in New York.
Trafficking of children
A presentation of the situational analysis undertaken by HAQ on child
trafficking in India, was made at a workshop of tdh partners in
Hyderabad on March 28, 2001 and then again to a larger audience in
Mumbai on 19th June 2001.
HAQ: Centre for Child Rights was unanimously selected as the
Secretariat for a national Campaign Against Child Trafficking by

7. over 40 organisations participating in the national workshop on child
trafficking in Mumbai on 19th-20th June, 2001, organised by terre des
homes (Germany) India Programme. The Campaign is an initiative of
terre des homes (Germany) and is part of their International
Campaign Against Child Trafficking. The purpose of the campaign is
to raise awareness on the issue for public debate and the ultimate aim
is to stop child trafficking by building a wider ownership to the cause
and the campaign. (A detailed report on the CACT Secretariat is
attached as Annexure 1).
Since its inception, HAQ has been a part of various networks and
campaigns such as the Campaign for Right to Education, the
Campaign against Child Labour. HAQ is also a founder member
and a core group member of the task force of the National
Coalition on Children in Armed Conflict, and a founder member
of India Alliance for Child Rights.
HAQ is an Associate Member of Defense for Children
International.
Ms. Enakshi Ganguly Thukral from HAQ from has received the
Ashoka Foundation Fellowship for carrying forward HAQ’s agenda
on child rights.
PROPOSED PROJECTS
1. Building up and strengthening HAQ’s Resource Centre.
2. Children and Budgets – an analysis of 5 State budgets and the Union
Budget.
3. Developing a child rights training kit for public education on child
rights.
4. Developing a communication and advocacy package on
child trafficking, through the use of radio.
5. Creating a database on organisations working on
children’s issues.

8. ANNEXURE 1
CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHILD TRAFFICKING (CACT)
A Report
July 2001 to March 2001
The Campaign against Child trafficking in India was initiated by tdh
(Germany) with the ultimate goal to stop child trafficking in India. A part
of their International Campaign Against Child Trafficking, its purpose is
to raise awareness on the issue for public debate. The campaign, an
independent entity, is being taken forward in all the regions with the
active participation and support from NGOs, Coalitions, networks,
government agencies and the civil society.
The Campaign’s perspective
Children are trafficked in India for a number of reasons, including
trafficking for prostitution, labour, adoption or begging. Over the years,
trafficking in children has become an increasing phenomenon and needs
to be addressed both in law and policy as well as in the form of
interventions on the ground. CACT seeks to address the problem from a
child rights perspective with the belief that there is a need for realisation
of human rights of children through policy, law and action.
The Initiation
On behalf of tdh, HAQ: Centre for Child Rights had prepared a study on
child trafficking in June 2001. The study has acted as a backgrounder to
the Campaign. Even while it was under preparation, an initial
presentation of the findings was made by HAQ, at a workshop of tdh
partners from the South in Hyderabad and subsequently, after printing it
was shared at the Mumbai consultation organized by tdh in June, 2001
with over 40 participants from different states.
It was decided at the Mumbai consultation to have a Campaign against
Child trafficking in India, which was called to be CACT. Accordingly the
participating members chose a National Committee and 4 regional core
group members to lead the Campaign in India. The National Committee
is presently an ad hoc body till such time that each of the states is
adequately represented. The 4-core group members co-ordinating the
Campaign at the regional level are - SLARTC from West Bengal, CSED
from Tamil Nadu, FACSE from Maharashtra and JWP from Delhi.

9. One of the outcomes of the workshop was the selection of HAQ: Centre
for Child Rights as the Campaign Secretariat to facilitate and co-ordinate
the overall activities of the Campaign.
The Campaign Secretariat
• Facilitating Regional Consultations
One of the decisions taken by the Mumbai Consultation was to organise
4 regional consultations across India. It was felt that for a Campaign to
evolve there is a need to identify regional problems and evolve local
strategies before a national strategy can be adopted. Accordingly, there
have been 4 regional consultations in the last four months (East, West,
South and the North) where the local voluntary organisations have got
together to identify the problem of child trafficking at the grass root level
and to devise ways and means of combating this problem.
Though these consultations were organised by the respective core
members of the region, the main task of the Campaign Secretariat in the
first 6 months of its inception has been to co-ordinate with them on a
regular basis to ensure the successful completion of the regional
consultations. This included preparing the draft Campaign Statement
and sending it across to the core members as initial distribution material
to the local NGOs, attending and co-ordinating the workshops,
presenting the Campaign to the participants and have one-to-one
dialogue with NGOs where needed.
As a precursor to these consultations there were preparatory meets
organised by the core members in each region to decide on the logistics,
the resource people, number of participants, etc for the regional
consultations. One of the tasks of the Campaign Secretariat was to
initiate and help the respective core members to organise these meets
and ensure the participation of the region’s National Committee members
along with the core member and the Campaign Secretariat.
• Creating a resource base
The Campaign Secretariat is in the process of developing a resource base
with the help and support of partner NGOs, that promotes a better
understanding on child trafficking and provides necessary information
for action. Building mass awareness on this issue at every level needs
interventions or programmes. And it is important to create an
appropriate database on the ground situation, on the existing
programmes or policies and identification of target groups. This would

10. mean primary studies conducted at the grass root level initiated by the
respective core members.
As a forerunner to this, the Secretariat has distributed detailed
questionnaires to NGOs asking for organisation specific information.
These forms have been distributed to the NGOs present at the regional
consultations as well as to other NGOs. The information will be used to
tabulate basic NGO information and their work area especially if it is
related to child trafficking in anyway. Currently, the process of getting
the NGOs to send the duly filled forms is in progress.
One of the activities that the Secretariat had envisaged was to develop a
directory on Crisis Intervention Services available in the different
regions/states for victims or probable victims of child trafficking. While
forms were developed and circulated during the regional consultations,
while visiting individual NGOs and through other forums, the response
has been very limited. The initiative will nevertheless continue, with a
broader scope this time to cover all services that can be used by the
victims/probable victims. This will be done after reworking on the format
and clearly explaining to the campaign partners and other NGOs the
need and purpose of such a directory and how it can be used.
The Secretariat is also collecting research papers, studies and videos
related to trafficking.
• Organise IEC material
An important mandate for the Secretariat is to prepare IEC and publicity
material that can help in carrying the campaign forward. The Campaign
logo, the theme posters, the handbill, a demand flier are some such
material produced by the campaign. In developing these materials inputs
received from the regional consultations were given due consideration.
The materials produced so far are in English and Hindi. Eventually
however, the idea is also to ensure translation of all the IEC material into
the vernacular. This will be possible in co-ordination with the State
chapters, as and when they are set up.
An audio-visual presentation is also being developed in English and
Hindi to be used by NGOs and individual partners to inform a wider
range of people about child trafficking and the need to join hands to stop
it.

11. • Advocacy
This is an ongoing process directed at generating a wider ownership to
the cause and the campaign. At one level the Secretariat has been
working towards formation of a core group of parliamentarians and
media to bring the issue of child trafficking into national debate and
public agenda. At another level, it has introduced different NGOs to this
issue and formation of State chapters of the campaign to move further in
its mission to stop child trafficking in partnership with as many NGOs
and grassroots organisations is in progress.
At yet another level, CACT, through its core group members and state
alliances has initiated a preliminary dialogue with different funding
agencies on the issue of collaboration keeping in mind the fact that the
Campaign is being launched with the aim of catalysing support and help
from other agencies to sustain it in the long run.
Though tdh has initiated the campaign, in order to make it a dynamic
and independent entity, there is a need to collaborate with others. As a
first step towards this goal, the Campaign Secretariat has also worked
with the core members towards inviting other funding agencies at these
consultations.
CACT received some international recognition with HAQ’s participation in
the South Asia Consultation for the Second World Congress Against
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. This recognition now needs
to be carried further through networking and action.
• The Advisory Board
The Secretariat has also had the responsibility of inviting several experts
from different walks of life to join the advisory board. With the efforts of
the Secretariat and necessary help and support from the core group
members, the present Advisory Board includes - Mr. P.M. Nair, IG Patna,
Ms. Amarjeet Kaur, a social activist and a trade unionist from Delhi, Ms.
Annam Suresh, Senior Journalist from Calcutta, Ms. Alpa Vora, a child
rights activist and an old associate of the CACL from Mumbai, Mr. Pravin
Patkar from Prerna, Mumbai and Ms. Pam Rajput from Chandigarh.
While Ms. Rajput has formally agreed to be on the Advisory Board she
has been out of the country and therefore there has not been any further
communication with her on CACT. During the CACT launch, Mrs. Vibha
Parthasarathy, the then chairperson of the National Commission for
Women had also agreed to be on the Board.