RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Children Speak up to Shape Education Policy

By Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Sep 2 (IPS) - Once, at a workshop for children, government officials were busy praising the efforts of a special desk for women and children in Sri Lankan police stations, until one child asked: "But how can it be successful if no one is at the desk?"

Lakshman Malawathanthrige, senior child rights specialist at the Colombo office of Save the Children recalled how the question stumped officials at the workshop. "Many officials representing government units involved in children's issues don't expect children to be probing, aggressive and demanding on issues concerning them and their future."

Education -- even more than the effects of the country's 20-year-old ethnic conflict where a ceasefire is now in place -- is the most important need for children, according to young people themselves.

At children's workshops, seminars and in interviews with adults, young people keep raising the desperate need for better education facilities particularly in rural communities.

Children from Matara and Galle in southern Sri Lanka to the northern-most point of Jaffna are asking for better facilities in education.

"Even if you take the war, the bigger impact has been on education. Buildings have been destroyed, there are no teachers and we are short of books and other material," says 18-year-old Dharmala Sathianesan, who is studying in the advanced level class at Jaffna Hindu College.

Jaffna, once the home of Tamil Tiger guerrillas in the northern part of the country, is the worst affected town in Sri Lanka. Buildings, homes and farms lie destroyed by the armed conflict surrounding the Tiger rebels' quest for a homeland for minority Tamils.

As Sri Lanka prepares a National Plan of Action for Children in line with the goals of the 2002 U.N. General Assembly on Children, children in the age group 14 to 18 years are asserting their rights and want their proposals to be included in the U.N.-led Action Plan.

This action plan, coordinated by the Department of National Planning and under preparation by an official drafting committee, is due to be presented to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe next month.

The report is expected to deal with education, health, nutrition, child protection and children affected by war and conflict.

Despite dwindling state resources this year triggered by excessive spending and the legacy of a bloated defence budget in the late 1990s, Finance Secretary Charitha Ratwatte has promised state funding to implement the four-year plan on children.

The consultative process in Sri Lanka toward preparing the plan began in January, but it was only in June that children came into the picture.

In the past three months, Save the Children together with the U.N. Children's Fund and Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka's biggest grassroots organisation, have organised eight children's workshops in nine provinces covering the 24 districts in the country.

More than 350 children with equal gender representation, including a group from the differently able, took part in the consultations.

Many raised issues like the government spending three times more on urban schools than rural schools, the vast gap between the rich and the poor and less resources to the poor.

The media and television came into the spotlight, with children urging the authorities to stop showing sex and violence on television and projecting women and children in a negative way particularly in television dramas and advertisements.

Mayumi Nadisha Vitachchi from the central hill town of Kandy said rural schools generally get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to resources. "We have been pushing for facilities similar to what urban schools get," the 17-year old said after the final workshop in Colombo on Aug. 20 before the action plan is drafted.

"We are making a strong case for a review of the whole media and TV policy in the country. For instance, educational programmes that we would like to watch are shown on state television between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. - when we are at school,'' she said. ''Isn't it absurd?"

Kaushalya Sandakalani, a 16-year-old from Badulla also in the central region, said another disappointing feature is the frequent display of smoking and drinking on television. "Even on popular cartoons, there is some man smoking a cigarette or getting drunk."

It has been a struggle for 14-year-old Chanaka Pradeep Karunaratne, whose father died when he was 12 and whose mother works as a guard in a national civil force protecting Sinhalese-dominated northern villages from Tamil rebels.

His priorities - education, children not having books and teaching material from the centre not reaching distant schools. "We need teachers," said the small youngster, who dreams of being a UNICEF worker.

Rajaratnam Sudharshan from Jaffna believes that the biggest impact from the war is on education. "We have no teachers, furniture or buildings. We lost out on our education during the war," the 18-year old said, hoping the current peace talks between the government and Tamil rebels will end in a negotiated settlement.

Official figures show that public spending on education fell to 2.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1999 from 5 percent in 1960, which is the World Bank recommended level for education spending. (END/IPS/AP/HD/PR/ED/FS/JS/03)