July 19, 2025 08:20 am (IST)
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GCE organising campaign on education for all
Kolkata/New Delhi, May 20 (IBNS): Global Campaign for Education (GCE) has organised a worldwide annual campaign, Global Action Week to raise awareness on the importance of 'Education for All'.
Through the campaign which will run throughout May, children will put forward their concerns and demands in a charter of demands to various policy makers at the regional, state and national levels.
Speaking on the occasion, Ramakant Rai from National Coalition for Education (NCE) said, “It is extremely important for us to provide quality education to children with disability and make them aware of their rights entitlements from the government.”
The charter of demand has been drafted through an intensive exercise, ‘Our Voice’ by children with disabilities from 18 states.
Our Voice is a platform created by World Vision India for Children with Disabilities (CWDs) to come together to talk about the issues they face, learn their rights and entitlements, identify challenges through score cards and group discussions and present their demands as well as their responsibilities to stakeholders like the government, media, civil society and their own communities.
An estimated 1 billion people live with disability, comprising approximately 15 percent of the global population. Out of these an estimated 93 million are children, 90 percent of children with disabilities worldwide do not attend school.
Children with disabilities are at a 1.7 times greater risk of being subjected to some form of violence. India has 12 million children living with disabilities. Only 1 percent of children with disabilities have access to school and one third of most disabilities are preventable. India spends only 0.83 percent of its health budget on mental health.
One of demands include promotion of the right of every child and youth with a disability to express his/her view pertaining to his/her education and life skills as defined by Article 23.1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Nisha Das from Kolkata who was with severe disability in the legs --emphasizing the importance of it said,” Many children are not educated and not included in society because they are poor, disabled or are girls. They are invisible in society. We have talent, abilities and dreams of a better world.” Her favourite activity is dance despite her disability.
These groups of children with disabilities face a multitude of barriers in participating equally in society. In particular, their right to education is often not realized, which in turn hinders their access to other rights and creates enormous obstacles to reaching their potential and effectively participating in their communities.
Rajesh, a visually impaired from Marur village in Tamil Nadu expressed, "there should be libraries with braile books and also ramps at all religious places.”
“The need of the hour is to focus on the implementation of RTE with respect to equity and quality with enhanced community participation and integration of excluded groups specially children with disabilities. Our society needs a paradigm shift to prioritise the most marginalised children in our political agenda,” said Dr Jayakumar Christian, CEO, World Vision India.
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