Activists observe that promoting the right of the Nigerian child should be the satisfaction of newsmen in promoting development journalism.
They note that reporting about children in emergency or crisis situations requires child’s rights protection through careful outlines of events in such reports to ensure that their images are portrayed in positive manners.
In this light, Mr Geoffery Njoku, Communication Specialist with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said journalists should apply the “do no harm rule’’ while reporting a child in an emergency situation.
According to him, writers should ensure that they do not cause more harm to children in the process of reporting to salvage a community that is undergoing crisis.
“In interviewing and reporting on children, we need to consider the confidentiality, ensure their participation in decisions that affects them and protect them from harm.
“Do not publish a story or an image which might put the child, siblings or peers at risk even when identities are changed, obscured or not used.
“We need to seek the consent of the guardian of a child before reporting about a child, do not harm any child, avoid questions, attitudes and comments that are judgmental’’, Njoku advised.
He argued that changing the name and obscuring the visual identity in a report of any child who had HIV or a victim of sexual abuse would play a significant role in protecting the rights of the child.
In her opinion, Mrs Judith Giwa-Amu, the Education Officer of the fund, observed that development journalism should also promote the need to provide right education for children as their rights.
“Reporting the need for creating a learning environment for children during emergency situations could promote tolerance and conflict resolutions.
“Education in an emergency is critical for normal development of children and can help children to deal with effects of crisis situations.
“It is also critical for the protection of children by offering a safe environment. Children in emergency situations have the same rights to quality education just like others,’’ she said.
She urged newsmen to focus on the activities of the Safe School Initiative inaugurated by stakeholders in partnership with UNICEF to ensure that children were learning in schools, especially in the North-East region of the country that it undergoing insurgency.
She observed that crises had many negative impacts on education by promoting child-marriage, inadequate learning facilities and destruction of school equipment.
Similarly, Mr Olusoji Adeniyi, Monitory and Evaluation Officer of UNICEF, called on journalists to enlighten the public that “70 per cent of the citizenry that bear the brunt of emergency situations and disasters are women and children.
“The women and children are more vulnerable to conflicts not because they are not fast to escape from the face of violence but because they want to account for all their children.’’
According to him, the plights of people living with HIV and AIDS, the physically challenged, the poor and homeless people in emergency situations should get accurate reports.
He said that emergency situations required proper information from the media to suggest safety measures and ways to avoid recurrence.
Apart from proper media coverage of crisis situations, Adeniyi said that government should invest in emergency profiling, risk mapping and contingency planning.
Similarly, Dr Oyesomi Kehinde of Department of Mass Communication, College of Development Studies, Covenant University, Ota and other analysts, noted that the child right issue had been discussed among media experts, educationists and social scientists on many occasions.
They observed that notable scholars saw the abuse of a child as a crime against humanity because children “are voiceless and invisible.
“There is a gross under-reportage of children’s issues having measured the extent of coverage given to children in some newspapers.
“It is also disheartening to note there are several cases of child-marriage, child-trafficking and child- labour in the Nigerian society.
“This situation, undoubtedly, is alarming and calls for urgent intervention. Perhaps, it was this concern that prompted the passage of the Child Right Act in sixteen states of the federation,’’ they said.
They insisted that there were various expectations of the mass media in protecting the rights of a child.
They also observed that some of the expectations were found in various conventions and laws aimed at the protection of the rights of a child.
According to them, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, Oslo Workshop/Resolution, Child Care and Protection Act, European Convention on the Exercise of Children’s Rights and the media, among others, are some of the avenues used to express concern for children.
By and large, they stressed the need for an improved development journalism in Nigeria to promote and protect the rights of the Nigerian child.