Rescued from abuse and child labour, 17-year-old to address Parliament

Born in a slum in Bengaluru, Kanaka, now 17, spent 12 years of her young life subjected to child labour. With her father bedridden due to a physical disability and her mother, who worked as a maid, being diagnosed with cancer, Kanaka, then a fourth grader, was forced to drop out of school to make ends meet.

After her mother's death, Kanaka was forced to stay with relatives who not only put her to work as a domestic help but also subjected her to abuse and harassment. But in 2011, when they got her to work at a wedding in Yeshwanthpur, it was the beginning of the end of Kanaka's woes — representatives from Sparsha, an NGO that works against child labour, saw Kanaka and rescued her.

Speaking with The New Indian Express, she said,

"I feel that though there are several laws to protect child rights, nothing is enforced effectively. I am going to stress the same in Parliament."

As of today, Kanaka is a first-year PU student at a private institution in Bengaluru. Having scored 80 percentile in her 10th-class board examinations, Kanaka aspires to be a scientist.

For the occasion of Universal Children's Day on November 20, Kanaka is among the 30 children from all over the world to have been selected to talk about child labour and several of their experiences at a Unicef-supported event at the Parliament. After going through several rounds of auditions that included hundreds of children from Karnataka alone, she has been given the opportunity to address the Parliament for eight minutes.

"There are thousands of children like me who have faced various kinds of abuse. Children in urban areas at least have people they can approach. However, there are children like me who suffer in slums and rural areas," Kanaka told The New Indian Express.

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