Bianet Childrens Site Is Launched

One of the four issues that BIA2 sees, as priority is children's rights. News about children, which have been part of the daily news flow, will from now on, be gathered under a separate site within bianet. Articles, campaigns, new writers and games will all come together under the Children's Site.

"Children by Numbers," will tell the situation of the world's children in the plain language of mathematics. We are hoping that the numbers we will be picking from the sea of statistics and placing on the Web site will create the hunger to find out the rest of the picture.

In the "Childish Look at the Agenda," we will pick a separate issue about children each week and study it in terms of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CHS).

We will refer to the CHS to emphasize the fact that some issues, which we find "quite normal" in our daily lives, are a violation of children's basic rights. We will write about incidents, which cannot be explained in words.

We will have separate sections on the right side of the page with the aim of transferring the children's agenda to the public's agenda and try and turn the site into a information resource for children's rights.

And of course, in doing these, we will stay loyal to BIA2's general principles and ethical values.

Transporting children's issues to the media

Issues about children are not covered adequately by the media. And when they are, children are depicted as passive beings that are the "victims" of life.

Children are usually not given the chance to convey their opinions.

It is not possible to say that the media is doing everything it can to promote and spread the 15-year-old United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to create awareness about the rights of the children. There isn't enough coverage of children's rights.

The Children's Site also aims to encourage frequent, wider and more qualitative coverage of children's rights.

The site, which is moving on gropely at the moment, will have met its goal when it becomes a collective works of "reporting on children's rights" and when it brings the issue onto the agenda of reporters.

One other goal of the site is to help Turkey's non-governmental organizations, which work for children, to get their voices heard by more people.

Write to us and have your voice heard

The Children's Site is open to every kind of contribution. You can send every opinion or news story about children, children's rights and all other related issues that need to be brought onto the agenda, to cocuk@bianet.org.

We are also looking forward to finding out about your opinions and criticisms on the site.

But we need to make clear that we will be "discriminating" against adults: Children's Site will be open to everyone's contribution, but more to children's contribution.

The site will provide a theoretically limitless medium for children to express themselves. Each step we take to increase the influence of the site will result in the expansion of the children's reach.

Reflecting the imagination of children

The Children's Site will be as "happy" as it can be. It will constantly emphasize that the right to "play" is among the basic rights of the children and at least as important as their other rights.

It will also be possible in the near future to view the works of child artists, articles of child writers, various games, puzzles and suggestions on the site. (EU/BB/EA/YE)