Evicted from Home, Unaccommodated in the Street: The Castigatory Experience of Skolombo Boys and Lakasera Girls of Calabar in the Light of UNCRC

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; for every child, every right), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and fully operationalised in 1990, firmly protects the rights of every child under the age of 18 years anywhere on the planet. The UNCRC clearly states that every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. An international treaty signed by 196 countries, bar the United States, since adoption is the most broadly endorsed children’s rights treaty in history and has helped transform children’s lives around the world. But despite provisions in favour of children’s rights well-articulated in the treaty, poignantly, not every child gets to enjoy the rights stated therein. In Nigeria, so many children are cut short of these rights, even though the nation is an avid signatory to the UNCRC treaty. As an analytical context, a number of teenagers (male and female) numbering more than 1000 living in the major streets of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria, conspicuously referred to as Skolombo boys and Lakasera girls of Calabar, are not only rejected, abandoned and sent away by their parents, but are also discriminated against by the entire city on account of false suspicions of wizardry and witchcraft, a modish form of child rights violations and a clear recalcitrant to the UNCRC treaty. It is startling that limited studies have addressed this problem that most fundamentally affects these children. Relying considerably on both primary and secondary data, this article examines the plights of these children, who are left to fend for themselves within a nation that signed on the dotted lines for the child’s right to protection and concurrently allowed them to be treated with ultra-condemnation. The article concludes that without concerted efforts geared to address child rights violations in the form of persistent rejection and discrimination, the cruel experience will eventually force them to strike and become more dangerous than society can handle.