INSIDE DOUGLAS COLLEGE / October 16, 1991

 

 

Children’s problems cannot be ignored

I gnoring the needs of children
today guarantees an increase in the
problems facing society tomorrow.

That’s the blunt assessment of
Lawrence Demoskoff, director of
Watari Research, a Vancouver
family and youth services society.

A year after Ottawa hosted an in-
ternational conference on children,
“| find what faces many children
pretty appalling,” says Demoskoff.
“My primary experience has been
with children on the street and |
don’t see a lot of good things
happening for them."

“Never mind our moral and
social responsibilities, but in terms
of long run costs, if we treat
children with respect they will
develop into better functioning and
healthy adults who won’t need
last-minute intervention or incarcera-
tion. We will also stop the cycle
which passes these problems onto
the next generation,” he says.
Demoskoff and Brent Parfitt,
Deputy Ombudsman for Children
and Youth, are speakers at a work-
shop called Rights of the Child,
October 29 at Douglas College. It
will explore strategies to deal with
children’s needs based on the
United Nations’ 1989 Rights of the
Child Report.

Demoskoff admits the U.N. Con-
vention to protect children’s rights
seems hollow beside today’s interna-
tional news stories: seven-year-old
labourers in India, children sold as
prostitutes in Thailand, babies sold
in Rumania, children facing starva-
tion in Iraq, and many more. But he
insists such stories show why the
report must “raise the conscious-
ness of adults,” Canadians included.

“One of the things the Conven-
tion can do is change old thinking
to do with children,” he says. “We
have to change the ‘children should
be seen and not heard’ attitude
because it makes it easier to sweep
their problems aside or treat them
as second-class citizens.”

Other thinking that needs to
change is a tendency to blame
children for social problems which
are admittedly complex. Demoskoff

says the issue of sexual exploitation
should remind society of its respon-
sibilities.

“The Convention states children
should be free from sexual abuse or
exploitation, but if you go down-
town or to south Granville Street

 

“We have to change
the ’children should
be seen and not
heard’ attitude
because it makes it
easier to sweep their
problems aside, or
treat them as
second-class citizens.”

you will see 12-year-old girls and
boys on the corners as prostitutes,”
he says. “Society wants to put all
the responsibility on the child for
being there, but what is going to
happen in a few minutes is that that
child is going to be sexually abused
by an adult. If you put that child
into another area of the city and
someone offered $50 to have sex
with them, the community would
be up in arms.”

When Ottawa hosted its 1990
summit, an estimated 875,000
Canadian children, one in five, were
living in poverty. Landon Pearson,
chairman of the Coalition for the
Rights of Children, praised Canada’s
input during the summit, but adds “1
haven’t seen it translated into
action.”

Most Canadians agree. Asked in
a recent Angus-Reid poll “Do you
think the government has lived up
to its commitment at the World
Summit to place children at the top
of government agendas?”, 79 per-
cent of Canadians polled said no.

Despite the statistics and sober-
ing stories, Douglas College’s Bruce

Hardy charges that, in reality, the
problems occur because our society
does not really care about its
children.

“There are individuals who really
care about the issue, but as a
society we just pay lip service to it.
Just look at the simple statistics that
one in three girls and one in seven
boys in Canada will be sexually
abused before they are 12,” says
Hardy, Instructor in the Child and
Youth Care Counsellor Program .
“In recent polls about priority
election issues we’ve heard about
honesty, economics, the environ-
ment, the GST and Quebec, but
where do we put the rights of
children?”

Hardy says change won’t come
until people start speaking up about
children’s rights. “If individuals really
want to do something, they should
write to their MLAs, MPs and city
council and say they want the inter-
ests of children to take priority over
other issues. If enough of this hap-
pens, politicians will react, as they
did with the environment,” he says.
“Individuals can also get involved as
volunteers in the many help or-
ganizations that exist. Involvement
doesn’t have to be financial.”

Demoskoff says the Rights of the
Child workshop for those who work
with youths, or are interested in
youth issues, will compare the U.N.
Convention with Canadian laws. It
will also offer practical applications
of those rights to social services. But
Demoskoff adds that major changes
can only occur if public feelings are
turned into political will. Otherwise,
many children, and the adults they
become, face little hope for the
future.

“Children know how to survive
but they don’t know how to live,”
he says. “Without good choices
they don’t have many opportunities,
except day-to-day survival.”

Rights of the Child takes place
October 29, from 9am-4pm at
Douglas College. For more
information, call 527-5479. @

 

agree