Children’s Rights

There was a curiosity when a discussion about children‘s rights as part of Human Rights (HAM) was conveyed with a role play or dramatization. Several question arose such as, why it was done with such method, how the dialogues were, what would be done, and several other questions.

A different new thing will be the appeal of an event. It led dozen of students attend a discussion held by Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta on Saturday, November 19, 2016 at Stube’s secretariat. This event was the first event of series of activities in Human Rights program.

Ariani Narwastujati, S.Pd., S.S. M.Pd, the Executive Director of Stube-HEMAT delivered material on human rights, especially children’s rights. She was quite familiar with this topic because she ever followed similar discussion in Stube-Nord, Germany. In addition, she also became the Secretary of children-friendly village at Nyutran, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

In the beginning of the discussion Ariani invited participants to practice breathing techniques and expression. These two things were important elements possessed by a person to play a role. Good breathing techniques would be very helpful in role plays, because acting requires energy to speak and move. The ability of expression was no less important, because the proper expression would strengthen the message.

Each participant chose rights that he/she wanted to gain and then practiced shouting the demands, including showing the expression. Apparently, not all participants can express themselves freely, some others still looked awkward and needed to learn more.

In group, participants prepared a short play to promote children's rights. The first group created a short song containing a message to respect children’s rights. The second group performed a song which contain messages to fulfill children's rights. The third group performed a short drama featuring a portrait of a small family in the hinterland of West Kalimantan who had limited education and health facilities.

In her presentation Ariani revealed that children's rights has actually been existed since the child in her mother pregnancy time, as a fetus. Children's rights were summarized in several groups, such as: civil rights and freedoms, and nurturing environment, health and welfare, education and leisure and special protection. One of the example of the fulfillment of children’s right is birth certificate.

Regarding the human rights in Indonesia, although human rights has been declared since 1948, Indonesian government embodied them in an Act in 1999. The declaration of human rights contains 30 articles that guarantee the right of every human being.

At the end of the event some participants expressed what they get, like "Through these discussions, all my questions have been answered because I want to be an activists of children and women’s rights," said Angelicha. Similar expression was also said  by Marno Lejap, a student from Lembata, "By knowing that Indonesia is still lagging behind from the understanding of international children’s rights, it inspires me that children-friendly village is needed to be implemented in the village of my origin, Lembata, NTT”.

The next series of Human Right activities are a discussion and to hear the sharing experience of a supervisor of Penitentiary Batu, Nusakambangan, and a training and  live-in with Sedulur Sikep community in Pati, Central Java.

Have a nice process to recognize yourself, others and human rights, guys! (TRU).