Abuse Of Children’s Rights
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Abuse Of Children’s Rights
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1. Background of the study.
Essayists and intellectuals have described the misuse of children’s rights as a disturbed childhood. In his thesis titled “Representations of Troubled Childhood in African Fiction Selected After 1990,” Edgar Fred Nabutanyi defines disrupted childhood as “the experience of children exposed to various forms of abuse, including physical violence, psychological, sexual, and emotional” (iii).
When a child’s rights are infringed, it simply means that some advantages considered socially or morally acceptable are jeopardised. Michelle Maiese highlighted how “talking about rights allows us to express the idea that all people are part of the scope of morality and justice” . He mentioned that:
Protecting human rights entails ensuring that people receive decent and humane treatment. In contrast, violating the most fundamental human rights deprives persons of their fundamental moral rights.
In other ways, it is about treating people as if they were less than human, deserving no respect or dignity. Acts commonly classified as “crimes against humanity” include genocide, torture, enslavement, rape, forced sterilisation or medical experimentation, and purposeful starvation. (Hubert, 144)
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines “child” in two ways: “someone who is not yet an adult” and “a son or a girl of any age”. The traditional definition, “someone who is not yet an adult,” suggests that something is missing. “Deprivation” is a word that Heidegger uses to describe something absent at one time, as does Leena Kakkori in his essay “What are young children?
A philosophical analysis of the essence of the tiny child from Heidegger’s concept of privation is referring “to a possibility of being and not merely to a propositional negation” to describe a child as “a human being who has a privation of adulthood.”
Overall, youngsters in their growth and development stage will undoubtedly interact with adults. These can be closely connected individuals such as their parents, brothers, uncles, aunts, and so on, and these youngsters are inherently vulnerable to these adults in their lives because they rely solely on them for almost everything.
It is up to these individuals, particularly the mother and father, to preserve and nurture the rights of these children. Instead of preserving these rights, “the domestic security of these children is ruptured,” as Nabutanyi observes in his dissertation, “the safety of the home space and the bedroom is compromised, and the cost of violence is traumatically borne by children” (92).
The word ‘domestic’ typically connotes a sense of security, comfort, and a location where one may experience one’s own identity.(Priya K, 52). Violation of any kind and from any direction inflicted on children usually has a physical and psychological impact on them; the damage is exacerbated when it is directed by the parents.
The picture of Ama’s childhood in Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street is similar to that of Kambili and Jaja in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus in terms of radical male parents with dogmatic tendencies. Both books also depict the victims’ silence and the female parent’s inability to prevent or defend the child from being violated or victimised by the father/father figure.
The violations committed against these youngsters have an impact on their ability to discover and be their true selves. Tuomaala notes that “at home, Kambili learns to imitate her father’s behaviour and values” (2).
This is naturally necessary for Kambili because doing otherwise will result in severe retribution from her forceful father. Opata claims that “Freedom is a human being’s most valuable asset and right. Basic freedoms are fundamental for human dignity and integrity, and play a crucial role in personality development.(Quoted in Orabueze 60).
When a child is raped, particularly in the domestic realm, the house becomes a cage that confines the child’s genuine self. In the long run, victims of child abuse or violation are often emotionally and psychologically bound to their violators (exhibiting traits or characteristics imposed on or brought upon them by their violators), limiting their ability to form their own personality and be their true selves.
After closely examining the lives of the children described in the two books under consideration in this study, it is clear that without self-discovery, these children would stay psychologically bound to the violence inflicted on them.
While Kambili and Jaja discover themselves with the support of Aunty Ifeoma, Ama in Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street does not, and this influences her later decisions. In other words, finding oneself, as Heidegger suggests in “Being and Time,” is the key to ultimate liberation.
This self-discovery is implied in one of the ‘intertwined’ Heidegerrian concepts that looks into the nature of human existence, referred to as ‘authenticity,’ which Kierkegaard views as such: “authentic existence is a herculean task requiring that we ‘choose’ ourselves in order to overcome or transcend those elements of life that we have no choice over, such as our parentage, biological makeup, and place of birth” (Matthew McDonald 58).
Existentialism puts light on the vulnerability of children around the world. Heidegger’s concept of throwness offers light on how beings are thrown into the universe with no choice, and how, as children, they are completely dependent on other beings for survival.
These other beings can sometimes become predators to these vulnerable beings newly thrown into the world, as is the case for Kambili and Jaja in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, who become prey to their father Eugene’s frequent violent outbursts, while Ama in Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street succumbs to the animalistic desire of one whom she refers to as Father.
That being said, the primary goal of this study will be to investigate these children’s violated states and how they prohibit them from being their true selves, as well as to explore the process of their self-discovery, which paved the road for their complete freedom.
1.2 Statement of Problem
The goal of this project is to examine examples of child abuse from an existentialist perspective. Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus is a widely read book that has mostly been studied for its depiction of domestic violence.
Most of the study is usually centred on the woman, which falls in line with womanist or feminist criticism, whereas some other works that have studied the text using the bildungsroman concept often allegorise oppression in the home, particularly of children, as a representation or show glass of the nation.
Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, on the other hand, has been primarily studied in terms of diaspora or psychoanalytic theory. This project will focus on child abuse in its entirety, rather than as a showcase for something else;
the purpose of bringing existentialist ideas to bear on the issue of child violation is to acutely observe children’s vulnerability and to see how freedom from the psychological effects of violation comes only after self-discovery has occurred.
1.3 Significance of the Study:
In terms of personal research, these two texts have yet to be juxtaposed for a study of how they depict child abuse. While Purple Hibiscus has been investigated for child abuse, the research has been conducted using theories such as trauma theory, psychoanalytic theory, identification theory, and so on.
This project is noteworthy because it uses existentialist concepts to the handling of child abuse in both books. This makes one vividly aware of the magnitude of children’s vulnerability and how abusing their rights causes them to live a “inauthentic existence” from which they can only be free when they discover themselves.
1.4 Objectives of the Study:
The overarching goal of this investigation is to look into the misuse of children’s rights. Examining the repercussions of these abuses on the identity or mineness of these children, according to Heidegger; delving into the moment of self-realization and the process of self-discovery that resulted in the accomplishment of complete freedom.
1.5 Scope of Study:
To focus on the abuse of children’s rights in the domestic realm, the characters to be investigated are Kambili and Jaja in Purple Hibiscus and Ama in On Black Sisters’ Street. Using, in particular, Heidegger’s idea of the nature of human existence.
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