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Women and Child Development Minister Annapurna Devi connected Saturday (October 11, 2025) said 854 one-stop centres for women person been established crossed India with the assistance of the Nirbhaya Fund to supply shelter, counselling, aesculapian aid, and ineligible assistance to survivors of violence.
Ms. Devi was addressing the two-day National Annual Stakeholders' Consultation connected 'Safeguarding the Girl Child: Towards a Safer and Enabling Environment for Her successful India' organised by the Supreme Court's Juvenile Justice Committee successful collaboration with UNICEF India.
The lawsuit coincided with the International Day of the Girl Child, which, the Minister said, made the treatment "particularly meaningful". Ms. Devi noted that 56% of legally adopted children successful India past twelvemonth were girls, reflecting a displacement successful societal attitudes. "Now, girls are not seen arsenic a load but arsenic a beacon of hope," she said.
The Minister besides spoke astir the women helpline 181, women assistance desks astatine constabulary stations, initiatives specified arsenic moving women's hostels and Shakti Sadhan, and their relation successful strengthening women's information and self-dependence. "This is not conscionable a argumentation discussion, but a surviving illustration of the aboriginal of our nation, our societal consciousness, and our ethical responsibility," she said, addressing a gathering that included Chief Justice of India B R Gavai, among others.
Ms. Devi said "women's power" lies astatine the halfway of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's imaginativeness of a developed India by 2047, and that the government's integrated attack done Mission Shakti, Mission Vatsalya, and Mission Poshan 2.0 aims to beforehand women's safety, empowerment, and self-reliance.
“Under the enactment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has adopted a life-cycle attack for the information and empowerment of girls. In each strategy of our government, empowerment of women is simply a apical priority,” she said. “The authorities aims to make a beardown aboriginal for women by providing them with integer and fiscal literacy, self-defence training, and beingness accomplishment education,” she added.
Emphasising a zero-tolerance argumentation against kid abuse, Ms. Devi said laws specified arsenic the Juvenile Justice Act, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Child Marriage Prohibition Act, and the Right to Education Act signifier a beardown ineligible information nett for children.
However, she cautioned that the quality of threats facing children is evolving, with cyber-bullying, online grooming, and integer trafficking posing caller challenges. "The authorities is implementing school-based consciousness programmes that see intelligence wellness and psychosocial enactment truthful that each kid is not lone harmless but besides mentally strong," she said. "We indispensable enactment unneurotic to marque respect for girls not conscionable a argumentation but a culture," the Minister asserted.
UNICEF's India typical Cynthia McCaffrey praised the country's strides successful kid protection, noting the constitution of juvenile justness boards, kid payment committees, and peculiar POCSO courts arsenic tangible progress. "The flagship programmes specified arsenic Mission Vatsalya, Mission Shakti, and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao person laid foundations that tin spell to scale," she said.
From teen clubs successful Madhya Pradesh to Bharosa centres successful Telangana and advocacy groups successful Odisha and Rajasthan, Ms. McCaffrey highlighted palmy community-level interventions that are "helping hold kid marriages and empower young girls".
However, she besides underscored the request for continued concern successful prevention, education, and survivor-centred care, noting that one successful 4 girls successful India is inactive joined earlier the property of 18. "Every kid indispensable person entree to immediate, sensitive, medical, psychosocial, and ineligible support. Justice indispensable beryllium swift and dignified," she said, calling for corporate enactment crossed institutions and States.
