Child’s Rights: Children’s Perspective on Being Heard
Child’s Rights: Children’s Perspective on Being Heard
Children’s voices are constantly drowned, ignored and passed off as just another fleeting remark. It is often forgotten that they too, have their rights as individual beings, most importantly to be heard and to be able to express their views freely (¬Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). Their experiences and perspectives on their lives, needs and wants has to be taken into serious consideration to understand them better in order to enable the administration of proper care and guidance into helping them advance to a better future, politically and economically (Tangen, 2008). Listening is thus far one of the most important aspect of learning more about children to understand their needs and rights as part of the community rather than just being marched around (Franklin & Sloper, 2005). Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the children’s perspective on their rights of being heard to create an optional channel for children to be heard.
Malaysia has also been competing for a seat to be a council in the United Nations organisation in the past years but hasn’t been able to succeed. Malaysia has been urged to adopt a human rights reform in order to be elected into the council as Malaysia has been discover to have a lack of commitment to human rights (Robertson, 2010). Due to the fact that Malaysia has been found to lack a strong human rights stance the researchers of the current study seeks to explore the level of understanding of children’s rights among children. Awareness on the importance of listening to children are crucial in both the economical and political sense as people are realising sooner that children play a big role in influencing decision making of their parents (Tangen, 2008). The importance of listening to children is also to uphold their ability to think for themselves and value their opinions about their wants and needs as a ‘being’, separated from what their guardians want
Children’s voices are constantly drowned, ignored and passed off as just another fleeting remark. It is often forgotten that they too, have their rights as individual beings, most importantly to be heard and to be able to express their views freely (¬Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). Their experiences and perspectives on their lives, needs and wants has to be taken into serious consideration to understand them better in order to enable the administration of proper care and guidance into helping them advance to a better future, politically and economically (Tangen, 2008). Listening is thus far one of the most important aspect of learning more about children to understand their needs and rights as part of the community rather than just being marched around (Franklin & Sloper, 2005). Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the children’s perspective on their rights of being heard to create an optional channel for children to be heard.
Malaysia has also been competing for a seat to be a council in the United Nations organisation in the past years but hasn’t been able to succeed. Malaysia has been urged to adopt a human rights reform in order to be elected into the council as Malaysia has been discover to have a lack of commitment to human rights (Robertson, 2010). Due to the fact that Malaysia has been found to lack a strong human rights stance the researchers of the current study seeks to explore the level of understanding of children’s rights among children. Awareness on the importance of listening to children are crucial in both the economical and political sense as people are realising sooner that children play a big role in influencing decision making of their parents (Tangen, 2008). The importance of listening to children is also to uphold their ability to think for themselves and value their opinions about their wants and needs as a ‘being’, separated from what their guardians want
References: Allan, J., & I 'Anson, J. (2004). Children’s rights in school: Power, assemblies and assemblages Clark, A., McQuail, S., & Moss, P. (2003, July). Exploring the Field of Listening to and Consulting with Young Children (Monograph No Convention on the Rights of the Child. (1989, November 20). Retrieved from UNICEF website: http://www.unicef.org/voy/media/CRC_english_language_version.pdf Crain, W. C. (1985). Theories of Developement.New York: Prentice Hall. Franklin, A., & Sloper, P. (2005). Listening and responding? Children’s participation in health care within England Groenewald. T. (2004). A Phenomenological Research Design Illustrated International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3 (1), 3-22 Hancock, R., & Mansfield, M. (2002, Summer). The Literacy Hour: a case for listening to children Maria, S. S. (2010, May 10). Buck up Malaysia, says Human Rights Watch. Free Malaysia Today. Mays, N. & Pope, C & Popay, J. (2005). Details of Approaches to Synthesis A Methodological Appendix to the Paper: Systematically Reviewing Qualitative and