Max Amuchie
The duty of the media to protect vulnerable groups in the society has been stressed over time. That role of the media was again the focus of discussion recently when UNICEF organized a workshop for selected journalists at Dannic Hotel, Enugu, writes Max Amuchie.
Does the media owe the child or the vulnerable group in society any responsibility? Put differently, can the child derive any benefit from the media? This was the thrust of the workshop for the media organized in Enugu recently by the Nigeria office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
Chikwendu Ogbonnaya called his paper, ‘THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN THE ADVOCACY FOR CHILD RIGHTS’ with focus on corporate social responsibility, public interest and the media.
The thrust of the matter, he noted, is what the media does with her corporate responsibility function to promote, arouse, identify, support public interest or do to change or shape public interest, perception and opinion.
According to him, the critical role of the media at all times irrespective of the space, time and dimension of social phenomenon of what discourse it is, is to identify the dominant public interest.
Ogbonnaya noted that traditionally and by obligation, the media has critical roles of social, economic and political development to perform in national development. Even though the media organically performs these three roles, it is only the first (social) that it performs without quantitative rewards but rather it gets reprisals. Unfortunately, because of the reward element associated with economic and political functions, the social aspect is not usually given the desired attention it requires. It is the social aspect, he said, that is the fulcrum on which the other two variables revolve – the development of the human capital – the Child.
He said UNICEF identifies the child as its “core issue and big business” and is doing everything possible and positive to mobilize public interest to approximate all positive aspirations of the child from its right to live and survive, develop and be protected and to participate.
It is as part of this mobilization that the media becomes strategic due to the media’s indeterminate capacity to reshape and impact on public opinion, perception, attitude and inertia, he said.
Read Also: Investment Opportunities in the Nigeria Stock Market
He said the role of the media goes beyond role expectation and assumptions and the attendant blame game when role expectations and assumptions fail.
Also, the issue of importance and concern for all stakeholders is the capacity of the media to fulfill this role expectation and deliver the expected services to the satisfaction of all intended beneficiaries.
Ogbonnaya noted that the issue of capacity would be better appreciated in a framework of analysis that situates the roles, value expectation and result in an analytical frame capable of creating directional process, value and intended beneficiaries’ indicators.
He examined the role of the media in the context of a child’s cocktail of rights. The first right of the child is the right to life and survival. He said this poses an enormous challenge to the media largely due to the level of socio-economic formation of the Nigerian society – illiteracy and poverty.
This stage, he noted, requires extensive advocacy for: good health for pregnant mothers; sustainable advocacy for survival through immunization, healthy maternal practice; protection against early childhood diseases; Insecticide treated nets, and exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months.
The second right of the child is the right to development. Ogbonnaya said the Millennium Development Goal has a standard for minimum level of education, medicare, family and state must provide for the child’s development. He said the role of the media here goes beyond the watchdog role to benchmarking and country pair review advocacy on the dangers of low and poor human capital development both to the individual household units and the state at large.
The third right of the child is the right to protection. He said the child needs to be protected from all forms of abuse, abuse that threatens his physical, mental and psychological development and well-being. Protection should be geared towards making the child an active participant of his society, he noted.
On the issue of whether the level of socio-economic formation of the Nigerian family supports total child protection, Ogbonnaya said it is “because we are dealing with universal average and not particular specifics; particularly within the context of development and under-development. Therefore, protection should aim at achieving the universal average or standard.”
He said the media’s systematic and sustained advocacy is required for policy change or reinforcement to actualize and implement the Child Rights Act.
He identified a number of factors that could limit the media in corporate social responsibility. These include finance, state and society support, credibility of information, technical competence of advocacy and reporting and knowledge and legal frame of public policy advocacy and analysis. Others are proper in-feed and feedback information process, data accuracy, prioritization of the child’s value and limited understanding of development partner internal mechanism.
Akin Jimoh, project director of Development Communications Network (DEVCOM), Lagos, made a presentation on ‘The journalist as a stakeholder in health in Nigeria’. He started by looking at Nigeria’s health and demographic indicators. With a population of 140 million people, he said, one in every five Africans is a Nigerian. Twenty-three percent of this population is made up of women of child bearing age while 20 percent of children are less than five years of age. He said one million under-five children die every year making Nigeria to account for 10 percent of global deaths. Also, he noted, 52,900 women die annually from pregnancy-related complications out of the global figure of 529,000. In addition, every hour six women die, the same way 117 children die within the same period. Jimoh added that a woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth in Nigeria is 1 in 13. Nigeria is the 10th largest country in the world with a crude birth rate 41.7 per 1000 and total fertility rate of 5.7 according to 2003 statistics. Worse still, Jimoh said, Nigeria is ranking second in global Under-5 mortality.
He said the media has a duty to women and children because of the unacceptable high rate of maternal mortality rate and Under-5 mortality rate due to weak health system and low coverage of mother, newborn and child healthcare.
Arguing that mother, newborn and child are inseparable triad, the DEVCOM project director said similar conditions contribute to both maternal and newborn mortality, adding that more than 61 percent of newborn deaths occur between days 0 and one.
He noted that maternal deaths, still births and newborn deaths are strongly linked in terms of time and place of death and delay in access to care.
He identified three main challenges to institutionalising political priority for safe motherhood in Nigeria as translating the professional/moral authority of the network of organisations in this field into potent political influence; securing adequate national and budgetary appropriations for the cause, and generating sub-national (especially state and local government) as well as national political support.
For Jimoh, there could be short-term indicators of maternal health in Nigeria. These are greater visibility of safe motherhood issues in the Nigerian mass media; a more informed policy environment around safe motherhood (IMNCH) promotion; and improved public awareness and understanding of safe motherhood issues.
The long-term indicators, according to him, are decline in maternal/infant mortality and morbidity levels in Nigeria and improved policy responses to safe motherhood issues at state, local government and national levels.
In conclusion, Jimoh emphasized the collective goal of journalists in maternal and child health. These are decline in maternal/infant mortality and morbidity levels in Nigeria; and improved policy responses to safe motherhood (IMNCH) issues at all levels.
