Events that led to four chil­dren be­ing tak­en in­to the cus­tody of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty were the sad pre­lude to yes­ter­day’s ob­ser­vance of World Chil­dren’s Day in T&T.

In the hours lead­ing up to the an­nu­al com­mem­o­ra­tions, a ba­by girl was found aban­doned in bush­es off Beau­car­ro Road in Freeport. Just hours af­ter that, three oth­er girls were close by when gun­men am­bushed and fa­tal­ly shot their moth­er and old­er sis­ter.

Sad cir­cum­stances have put these chil­dren in the na­tion­al spot­light and brought in­to fo­cus how much needs to be done for the wel­fare and de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s chil­dren.

This year, dom­i­nat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which has put so many as­pects of our lives in­to dis­ar­ray, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult for our na­tion’s chil­dren. The dis­place­ments and ad­just­ments brought about by the virus have made them more vul­ner­a­ble to sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse and ne­glect. Even their ba­sic right to ed­u­ca­tion is not guar­an­teed.

And so on a day to cel­e­brate chil­dren, this na­tion was giv­en a sober­ing re­minder of the rights we fail to up­hold and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties we of­ten shirk when it comes to our pop­u­la­tion’s youngest and most in­no­cent.

But the events of Thurs­day are just two of many ways in which we are falling short in the care and pro­tec­tion of our chil­dren.

Oth­er prob­lems have come to light over the past few days in a Guardian Me­dia spe­cial se­ries, “No Child Left Be­hind,” which has ex­posed the large num­ber of chil­dren com­plete­ly locked out of on­line class­es due to cir­cum­stances be­yond their con­trol. Pover­ty—which leaves most of them out of reach of the vir­tu­al plat­forms where class­es are be­ing con­duct­ed this term—is a com­mon theme in many of the sto­ries we have re­port­ed so far.

There are far too many in­stances of chil­dren and their fam­i­lies falling through the cracks and it seems not enough ef­fort is be­ing made to bring about a gen­uine turn around in such cas­es.

We are not, at this time, ful­ly aligned with this year’s World Chil­dren’s Day theme, “In­vest­ing in our fu­ture means in­vest­ing in our chil­dren.”

T&T rat­i­fied the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child 29 years ago, in­di­cat­ing a com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing rights that must be re­alised for chil­dren to de­vel­op to their full po­ten­tial. The con­ven­tion, which fo­cus­es on the whole child, al­so in­spired the Na­tion­al Child Pol­i­cy 2018-2028, a doc­u­ment meant to guide poli­cies and pro­grammes to make T&T a much bet­ter place than it is now for chil­dren.

The vi­sion out­lined in that pol­i­cy is that all chil­dren should be “hap­py, healthy and con­fi­dent; and their rights are re­spect­ed, pro­tect­ed and pro­mot­ed to fa­cil­i­tate their holis­tic de­vel­op­ment to­wards achiev­ing their fullest po­ten­tial as con­struc­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety now and in the fu­ture.”

It is a vi­sion that now needs to be matched by ac­tion, guid­ed by clear­ly enun­ci­at­ed poli­cies that firm­ly place chil­dren at the cen­tre, in­vest­ing in re­sources for their over­all de­vel­op­ment and care for the brighter fu­ture they de­serve.