Social norms biggest challenge in child rights: UNICEF

KOLKATA: Prevailing social norms such as early marriage and child labour are the biggest challenge in implementing child rights in the country, a UNICEF official said.

"The main challenge for us is not the lack of resources but existing social norms. We have to change them to give a better future to our children," David Mcloughlin, Deputy Representative (Programmes), UNICEF India said after launching the State of the World's Children Report.

Giving the example of child malnutrition, he said more than half of the infants in the country are not exclusively breastfed during the first six months resulting in poor child health.

"We must keep motherhood out of childhood. Children are born to young mothers who marry in teenage. They then adopt unhygienic and unsafe feeding practices. These social norms are the challenges before us," the official told PTI.

He said UNICEF is getting full support from both the government and India's private sector in their fight for improving the lives of children.

Marking 25 years of Convention on Rights of The Child (CRC) which was adopted by the United Nations' General Assembly in 1989, the State of the World's Children Report focuses on leveraging the power of innovation to reach out to every child on the planet.

"It also sets the agenda for Sustainable Development Goals as the Millennium Development Goals end in 2015," Mcloughlin said.