It's Your Right: Abiidat (5) on Children's Rights

Abiidat, aged 5, from Educate Together National School, in Navan, Co. Meath talks about the importance of the right to rest for a child and explains to us just how much right to friendship and her own religion means to her. Below is the text transcript of what Abiidat had to say.

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Abiidat: My name is Abiidat. I am 5 and a half years old and I am in senior infants.

We all have the right to rest from work and relax and if we didn’t rest from work we’ll feel very tired like in the evening or in the night.

And if someone didn’t have any rights or didn’t know rights that means they could not, like, have a life or live. They’ll need to have some rights so when they grow they can know more things.

Question: And Abiidat, what does the right to friendship mean to you?

Abiidat: Yeah, it’s important to me because when I was new to the school I had no pencil case. I wasn’t really sitting beside Anastasia, we were separated on tables like and Anastasia got a new pencil case and she said she’s gonna share me one of her pencils. There was lots of times when I was new I played with Anastasia.

Question: How would you feel if you didn’t have the right to that friendship?

Abiidat: If I didn’t have the right to friendship. I’d be really sad, I’ll have no friends or family.

Question: What do you do you think life would be like if you didn’t have that right? Abiidat: If I didn’t have a rights, I wouldn’t have a family, I wouldn’t have food, I wouldn’t have, like, any friends or school.

Question: One of the rights was to practice your own culture, religion and language. So to you it’s important to practice your own religion?

Abiidat: My religion, I’m a, like, a muslim and normally i don’t really eat ham because it’s bad for my religion. And if someone came along to me and said, “No, you’re not allowed to practice your religion. You have to respect my religion before you could understand your religion!” I’d be really sad. I’d say like “Let me practice the religion I want to practice.”

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