New Delhi: A nation or society cannot celebrate its achievements if the women and children are not safe, said Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday.
He said that “we will have to go beyond legal provisions" and the society must come together to ensure the safety of women and children, reported PTI.
The comments came while the law minister was addressing a national conference on 'Child Sexual Abuse Material', hosted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.
He said that crimes of child sexual abuse are one of the gravest and most disconcerting challenges. He particularly emphasised on the issue of violence faced by children and urged all stakeholders and society to do more, as per PTI.
He described the conference as "timely and very relevant", and said, "we expect that concrete outcomes will come out of it.” He underlined that "a society or a nation cannot celebrate its achievements if their women and children are not safe".
"The violence against children, especially child sexual abuse... I feel, and it is for everyone, is the most grave and disconcerting challenges," he said, according to PTI.
The Law Minister further added that while all crimes are bad, those against children are “difficult to digest”. He stressed that such crimes need to be approached with more seriousness and that they shouldn’t be treated “just as a crime”.
"All crimes are bad, but crimes against children are difficult to digest. How can you commit crimes against children? We have to be extremely serious in our approaches. It cannot be treated just as a crime. If you look at it just as a crime, then we will deal with it just as an ordinary crime," Rijiju said, according to PTI.
The minister inaugurated the conference on Thursday in the presence of NHRC Chairperson Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra and rights panel members, besides senior officers of the ministries concerned, legal experts, academicians, and scholars.
The aim of the two-day conference is to derive recommendations for policymakers, and content hosts, including social media platforms and law enforcement agencies among others, after deliberations to advocate safe cyberspace for children.