Nearly 100 districts across the country have been listed as child-vulnerable areas wherein children are at a high risk of losing parental care and getting exposed to difficult circumstances, according to a new survey conducted by SOS Children’s Villages of India, a non-government organisation that helps orphaned children.
Koraput district in Orissa has the highest child vulnerability index followed by Balaghat district in Madhya Pradesh and Godda, Giridih and Pakur in Jharkhand.
Sixty-two of the listed districts fall in the East Zone consisting Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal. The districts in the North Zone do not figure in the list.
Vulnerable children are defined as ones most likely to lose parental care and support due to reasons like poverty, social unrest, HIV/AIDS and disability.
The child vulnerability index was arrived at after an analysis based on the most common causes of child vulnerability. Five hundred and ninety-three districts in the country were ranked on the basis of key variables like HIV/AIDS, social unrest and poverty. The sum index value determined the degree of child vulnerability for each district. The estimate was arrived at on the basis of the Census and population projection data.
This analysis of child vulnerable districts was undertaken to enable the NGO to target its future interventions in the vulnerable and needy geographic locations. Articulating the need for greater protection of children and better childhood in these districts, SOS secretary-general Rakesh Jinsi said: “There is a need to protect the most vulnerable child population in the backward parts of the country. We are running our villages and family strengthening programmes in some of these areas to protect the rights of the vulnerable children. We hope citizens, civil society organisations and State Governments will join us in our efforts to protect children in these identified districts.”