Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh has is­sued a stir­ring ap­peal for all cit­i­zens to make a spe­cial ef­fort to­wards en­sur­ing that chil­dren are not abused and are treat­ed in ac­cor­dance with their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. In his mes­sage for the Unit­ed Na­tion's Uni­ver­sal Chil­dren's Day, which is cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly on No­vem­ber 20, the min­is­ter al­so notes that this year, it is du­al­ly com­mem­o­rat­ing World Day of Prayer and Ac­tion for Chil­dren, with the fo­cal theme be­ing the Pre­ven­tion of Vi­o­lence Against Chil­dren. Gopeesingh said: "I can­not stress enough the sig­nif­i­cance of this day to Trinidad and To­ba­go-as it comes at a time in our na­tion's his­to­ry when many of our chil­dren seem es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to crime, vi­o­lence and gen­er­al so­cial ne­glect.

"I there­fore call on our cit­i­zens to use Sun­day No­vem­ber 20 to re­flect on the very cru­cial need for us all to en­sure that our chil­dren tru­ly ben­e­fit from their guar­an­teed con­sti­tu­tion­al and hu­man rights of safe­ty, pro­tec­tion, re­spect, care and love." Point­ing out that his min­istry and Gov­ern­ment has im­ple­ment­ed many po­lices geared at en­hanc­ing the rights and wel­fare of the na­tion's chil­dren, the min­is­ter said this could nev­er be enough. "The re­al­i­ty is how­ev­er, that none of these poli­cies will achieve their true pur­pos­es un­til every sin­gle cit­i­zen of our coun­try takes per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­mot­ing the wel­fare and bet­ter­ment of our chil­dren." It is a sad fact that through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go chil­dren are, in many cas­es, the vic­tims of ter­ri­ble crimes, vi­o­lence, ne­glect and abuse. Though they have the pro­tec­tion of civ­il rights, they do not al­ways have pro­tec­tion from the adults with whom they in­ter­act, and on whom they de­pend for their rais­ing and nur­tur­ing.

Gopeesingh stat­ed that one of the most painful phe­nom­e­na our so­ci­ety has ex­pe­ri­enced over the past two decades is our chil­dren be­com­ing 'col­lat­er­al dam­age' in gang war­fare and parental ne­glect. We sim­ply can­not let this con­tin­ue, he added. "The time has come for us all to re­solve to change this scourge by es­sen­tial­ly chang­ing how we view chil­dren. We must re­alise that in­vest­ing in our chil­dren is not a na­tion­al lux­u­ry or a na­tion­al choice-it is a na­tion­al ne­ces­si­ty. If, as in­di­vid­u­als, we do not stand up for chil­dren's rights of equal­i­ty and jus­tice, then we do not stand for much as a peo­ple. "The time has come to take that stand. On this day, when we ho­n­our the sa­cred ex­is­tence of chil­dren, let us make that first step to­wards be­com­ing a na­tion where all our chil­dren know that they are loved, re­spect­ed, pro­tect­ed, and re­gard­ed as equal hu­man be­ings who are tru­ly the trustees of our na­tion's fu­ture," Gopeesingh added.