Ukrainian children want rights and responsibilities
Lessons in citizenship are being mastered by Ukraine’s schoolchildren. This evident from the official results of the contest “My Rights and Responsibilities as a Young Citizen of Ukraine,” which were announced by the organizers on Oct. 23. The contest lasted for over a month, and some 200 works by schoolchildren in grades 6 to 10 were submitted to the jury.
Mykola Tomenko, head of the Parliamentary Committee on Family, Youth, and Sports, commented on the children’s works, noting that their ideas and aspirations are similar in many respects to projects being planned and carried out by the committee. “However, this is definitely a different generation than the one to which the current government belongs. Their logic is entirely different, but these works will help us place the right accents in our political activities,” said Tomenko.
In many respects the topics that are of most concern to children are of statewide significance. Quite a few young citizens emphasize the problem of juvenile alcoholism, drug addiction, inactive and monotonous leisure, corruption in higher schools where these children will be enrolled before long. For example, Yulia Tovstukha, a 10th-grade winner of the contest, notes that the media are not effectively protecting children from negative influences by not promoting a healthy lifestyle. A number of children end up outside the parental home at an early age, and this is another problem that needs to be overcome.
Schoolchildren do not know how to counteract negative phenomena and protect children’s rights, but sometimes they offer such advice as the need to ratify additional conventions on protecting their rights and responsibilities, cooperate more closely with international organizations, and borrow from international experience.
“We are doing these things,” says Tomenko. “Recently our committee ratified the third convention on the protection of children’s rights. Now, in the event of divorce, alimony can be exacted from parents if they are based on th e territories of any of the 22 signatories to the convention.”
The organizers of the recent competition also noted that quite a few Ukrainian children have learned to use their rights and honor their responsibilities.
What is behind the children’s interest in the contest? Some participants who attended the awards ceremony explained. Maria-Oleksandra Dobosh, a sixth-grader from Uzhhorod, said that before writing her contest essay, she spent several days discussing rights and responsibilities with her parents. Yulia Tovstukha is convinced that enjoying only rights, even if you are a child, is wrong. It was interesting for her to discuss this question with her peers and read other people’s opinions.
The contest showed that Ukrainian children have a sense of responsibility. They are talented and aware that Ukraine has a promising future. The best works won awards. There were 15 prizewinners, schoolchildren from various regions of Ukraine. The main prize, a certificate for study in the UK, went to Maria-Oleksandra Dobosh for her essay “The Right to a World Order.”
