'Children have never been recognized as actors in discussions on peace'

As the IPS Communication Foundation/bianet, we held the 36th meeting in our Meetings with Rights Organizations series, which we launched in July 2023 to help strengthen civil society and expand regular channels of communication, with the Children First Association (Önce Çocuklar Derneği). 

The online meeting, held on Aug 12, was attended by Atölye BİA Coordinator Ceyda Sungur, AtölyeBİA Research Coordinator Sinem Aydınlı, bianet Managing Editor Vecih Cuzdan and bianet Civil Society Stakeholders Reporter/Atölye BİA Assistant Evrim Gündüz on behalf of the IPS Communication Foundation/bianet, and Hivran Timur and Zeynep Sidar Irmak on behalf of the Children First Association.

During the meeting, we discussed the association’s arts and cultural activities and psychosocial support work with children, its mother tongue-focused workshops, and its neighborhood-based work in the Sur district of Diyarbakır.

Hivran Timur: ‘We were founded in response to a need that emerged after the appointment of trustees’

Hivran Timur said the Children First Association was founded in Diyarbakır in 2017 in response to a need that emerged after trustees were appointed to municipalities and several institutions in the city were subsequently shut down.

Arts and cultural activities make up the bulk of the association’s work. Timur said they conduct their activities in Kurmancî and Zazakî, with psychosocial support also forming part of their work.

Timur said the association also began working in Adıyaman following the Feb 6, 2023 earthquakes, but has recently refocused its efforts on Diyarbakır. She added that their work in Sur has gradually expanded into neighborhood organizing:

After moving to Sur, we saw that there were different needs here. We saw that children here were both being influenced by radical religious groups and experiencing serious trauma, along with their families, following the urban conflict in 2015. This led us to ask, ‘What can we do in terms of neighborhood organizing?’ We currently run workshops on a voluntary basis, without any project funding.

Zeynep Sidar Irmak: ‘We are trying to form a children’s theater group’

Zeynep Sidar Irmak said the association launched a pilot program during the summer after moving to Sur. The aim was to identify the needs of children in the neighborhood and gauge their interest in the workshops. Four workshops were launched by volunteers and continued for two months, with families applying directly for their children to participate.

Irmak said they wanted to continue the activities after the summer. To that end, they formed a group of children who had participated in the workshops:

We formed a group of seven children who took part in the workshops. We spoke with their families. If we receive their approval, we plan to continue drama, puppetry and Kurdish-language classes with the group during the school year and try to form a theater group with them.

Irmak: ‘We plan to expand the work to other districts’

Zeynep Sidar Irmak said the association has been working to combat child and forced marriage in Diyarbakır’s Çınar district. She said the work in Çınar had progressed better than they had expected. In the coming period, the association plans to carry out similar work in Bismil and Silvan.

Irmak said they would also broaden the scope of the workshops:

We will also add gender equality, reproductive health and sexual health education to our workshops. In Çınar, we had planned the workshops as two separate training programs, one for men and one for adolescents. We will carry out the new activities by separating the groups in the same way and expanding the range of topics.

Timur: ‘Children have never been treated as participants in discussions on peace’

Hivran Timur said the association was also seeking to bring the issue of peace into its work, noting that children’s experiences and voices have not received sufficient attention in ongoing discussions.

Timur said they had previously held photography workshops with children and that this experience led them to consider how a form of peace journalism centered on children could be developed:

We are now trying to put the issue of peace on our agenda. Children have never been treated as participants in discussions on peace. It is almost impossible for children to make their own voices heard in the media. We asked ourselves, ‘What would peace journalism focused specifically on children look like?’ We used to hold photography workshops for children. We are now brainstorming among ourselves about how we might connect that experience to this and what could come out of it.

Proposal for collaboration on child-focused journalism

During the meeting, building on the Children First Association’s idea of peace journalism focused on children, we also discussed possible collaboration on journalism that is both child-focused and participatory.

We shared bianet’s work on child-focused journalism and exchanged ideas on approaches that would allow children to take part in news coverage as active participants expressing themselves in their own words.

You can follow the Children First Association on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

(EG/VK)