Our rights, our voices - Promoting children’s rights

Youth play an essential role in community development, particularly the promoting children’s rights. Unfortunately, in many cases, children and young people are left out of the decision-making process about the issuesthat will affect them.

World Vision Myanmar continuously promotes child and youth participation, most recently by holding a two-day youth forum in Yangon.

"We organized this forum to hear from children and youth about the concerns facing their communities."

"We organized this forum to hear from children and youth about the concerns facing their communities, and we discussed how we can work together to address them," says Salai Aung ZinKyaw, World Vision Child Protection specialist for Yangon Zone.

About 100 youth representatives from seven townships came together to discuss the issues and make recommendations. The children identified their own debate ground rules during the very first session. In this increasingly tech-savvy world, they proposed an important rule- no selfies. But, as not everyone agreed, they made the concession allowing the occasional selfie as needed.

Their excellent recommendations included creating job opportunities with fair wages, obtaining National Registration Cards, services for out of school children, child protection hot line numbers, law reinforcement, and sufficient health clinics in their communities.

On the last day of the forum, members from Myanmar National Human Rightscommission (MNHRC) shared about human rights and rights related to children and young people.

“We came here to help you understand about human rights, something which we could not talk about for the past 50 years. We want to let you know that you have your own rights. We will support you in promoting youth rights,” says U KhinMaung Lay, member of MNHRC.

Staff from the Anti-Trafficking Task Force (Child Unit) sharedabout the types of cases that can be reported for action. One example is if achild isforced to buy alcohol by his or her parents.

“We came here to help you understand about human rights, something which we could not talk about for the past 50 years. We want to let you know that you have your own rights."

"Our unit takes action when cases are reported. I would like to encourage parents, caregivers and youth that it is the better to protect children in our own community and prevent cases from happening,” says M. Kawn Din, Police Major, ATTF (Child Unit).

“By participating in this forum, we gained self-confidence and we learned about our rights,” says Myo Aung, an 18-year-old from Hlegu, Yangon region.

“I am very happy to join this forum. Here, I gain new experiences. I learnedwhat other child groups are doing. Upon my return, I will organize our group to establish a saving and loan group so that we can createour own funding,” shares ThidaMoe, a 15 year-old youth representative from Kyangin, Delta.

A similar forum will be organized in other parts of the country where World Vision Myanmar operates.

World Vision Myanmar requests that the government will address the recommendations made by the children, so that we can work together to fulfil the rights of children.