Introduction
National Aboriginal and Islander Children's Day (NAICD) is a celebration of our children. Held on 4 August each year, NAICD was first observed by SNAICC in 1988. Each year SNAICC produces and sends out resources to help you celebrate NAICD.
What this year's theme is all about?
This year’s theme for NAICD is: Right Here, Right Now. Our Rights Matter. Through this theme, we seek to raise awareness about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s rights.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children too often still experience devastating realities across diverse areas of health, housing, education, care and protection, and removal from their homes and communities. In 2012, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the expert UN body mandated to monitor state parties compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, expressed particular concern about the serious and widespread discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Significant energy and resources are being invested in change. However, improvements continue to be hampered by the failure of our systems, processes and programs to draw on evidence of what works: local participation and ownership driving outcomes, holistic strategies responding to the causes of the problem, solutions coming from a strengths based approach within culture, and responsiveness to local context.
This year’s NAICD focus seeks to support outcomes through increasing public awareness about:
• The major human rights concerns that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children still uniquely and disproportionately experience around the country; and
• Special rights that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have as the Indigenous children of this country.
How can you help organise an event, raise awareness and celebrate this year’s NAICD theme in a way that is relevant and meaningful for your community?