Guwahati: This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and to celebrate the year, UNICEF’s flagship report, the State of the World’s Children(SOWC), calls for
urgent actions to prevent millions of children from missing out on the fruits of innovation.
The State of the World’s Children (SOWC) Report – Reimagine the future: Innovation for every child,
calls on governments, development professionals, businesses, activists and communities to work together to drive new ideas for tackling some of the most pressing problems facing children – and to find new
ways of scaling up the best and most promising local innovations.
The report is a crowd-sourced compilation of cutting-edge innovations and an interactive platform that maps innovations in countries all over the world and invites innovators to put their own ideas ‘on the
map’. The digital resource highlights how new ways of solving problems – often emerging from local commu-nities and from young people can help reduce the inequities that prevent millions of children from realizing their rights under the Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Since then, there has been significant progress in advancing child rights across the world– with a huge reduction in the numbers of children dying before the age of five and increased access to education and clean water.
Introducing the SOWC Report at the Inaugural, Dr. Tushar Rane, Chief of Office, UNICEF Assam, said ‘In Assam, there has been tremendous progress made for children in the last two decades. There have been
improvements in some of the key child survival indicators although more work remains to be done on the Infant Mortality Rate and the Maternal Mortality Rate-which is the highest in the country.
There has been encou-raging progress in the sphere of education but at the same time major chal-lenges confront the State in Sanitation and Hygiene practices.’Launching the SOWC Report, at the inaugural ceremony, Chief Guest, Ms. Runumi Gogoi, Chairperson, Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR) highlighted the role of media in the representation of children. She urged the media when covering stories on children and to refrain from violating the dignity and privacy of children while reporting on them.