Amend Nirbhaya Home policy: Child rights panel

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala state commission for protection of child rights has directed the government to make necessary amendments in its Nirbhaya Policy for transforming

Nirbhaya Homes

across the state into ‘

receiving homes

’ exclusively for

minor

girls who have survived sexual assaults.


“The existing Women and Children’s Homes (the Nirbhaya Homes set up as per the Nirbhaya Policy formulated in 2012 under the department of social justice) function in conflict with the rules under the Child Rights Act or the basic principles of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC),” said the commission in a recent order that found fault with Nirbhaya Home officials for a midnight

rescue

operation involving a minor girl survivor in Idukki last year.

The UNCRC guidelines and the Child Rights Act strictly prohibit accommodating adults and children under one shelter or rescue home, the commission pointed out.

The two-bench panel of the commission, which had examined a report submitted by the Idukki child welfare committee (CWC) chairperson after a visit to the Nirbhaya Home in the district, also directed that the stay of survivors at these proposed receiving homes should be limited to six months ‘within which a

rehabilitation

plan suitable to the particular girl should be chalked out and implemented’.

“The social justice department should initiate steps to appoint counsellors at these homes to provide individual counselling to survivors...and the rehabilitation plan should be based on the survivor’s social investigation report (SIR), which has to look into all the psycho-social elements,” the order said.

The officials running Nirbhaya Homes agree to the commission’s observations with regard to rehabilitation of the survivors. Though reintegration and rehabilitation of sexual violence survivors are among the major objectives of the state’s Nirbhaya Policy (apart from prevention of sexual violence, protection of victims and prosecution of perpetrators), the

state government

has done nothing so far to rehabilitate even a single survivor, they pointed out.

There are more than 400 survivors whose cases have been disposed of and still staying at a total of 12 homes functioning across the state, ‘as they have no place to go’, an official said. But when it comes to prosecution, the conviction rate is a high 87% in cases where survivors stay at Nirbhaya Homes, ‘as the accused will have least access to them for influencing’, the official added.

Allegations are also being raised that the LDF government is showing least interest in running Nirbhaya Homes, as it’s a ‘child of the previous UDF government’.

Meanwhile, the commission, in its order, has asked the social justice department to direct the ‘service provider’ to prepare individual rehabilitation plans for each survivor after ‘protecting all her rights and removing all possibilities of the survivor coming back to any of the rescue homes or shelters under the existing child protection system’.

The commission has also asked the department to direct all the CWCs to establish a system to permanently monitor the survivor rehabilitated through kinship care or foster care.