New Delhi, Nov 15 (IANS) The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) is preparing a comprehensive document recommending programmes to provide assistance to HIV/AIDS affected children.
The document includes suggestions like juvenile centres and providing legal and social support for children suffering from HIV/AIDS, NCPCR officials said.
‘We are formulating a comprehensive policy document. The recommendations will include all issues related to children suffering from HIV/AIDS,’ an NCPCR member told IANS.
‘The documents deals with all issues relating to health, education, social stigma, legal assistance, and property and inheritance related issues,’ she said.
‘Among the recommendations is a suggestion for juvenile centres for orphans. Support that needs to be extended to families who have lost their breadwinners is also included.’
Set up in March 2007, the commission’s mandate is to ensure that all laws, policies, programmes and administrative mechanisms are in consonance with the child rights perspective as enshrined in the constitution as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
According to NCPCR, a child is defined as a person in the 0 to 18 years age group.
According to sources, the recommendations are likely to be handed over to government in time for World AIDS Day on Dec 1.
More than 21,000 children contract HIV every year through parent-to-child transmission in India, where 3.8 percent or 70,000 children below the age of 15 live with the infection.
Chaha, a critical programme supporting nearly 60,000 HIV/AIDS effected children run by international NGO HIV/AIDS Alliance, is due to end in March next year.
‘Resource is one of the major problems for India as we mostly rely on international aid. Moreover, the performance of government institutions varies from state to state,’ Sonal I. Mehta, who heads the Chaha programme in India, told IANS.
‘Macro solutions can not solve micro problems. If there are care and support programmes, children can be helped, but the need for the government is to take resource allocation in its own hands,’ she said.
