Role Play (30 mins)

Goal of activity
Students see the application of children's rights to real life cases.
Students solve problems by applying rights.

Activity guidelines
Below are three stories of Nigerian children. Divide the class intro groups of 4 or 5. Give each group one of these stories to prepare as a role play. They should show in their role play how a child's rights can help solve the problem of the character in the story.

Story 1: Abeo
Abeo is 11 years old. She lives with her mother and brothers. Every school holiday her mother send Abeo to stay with her Aunt in Calabar. The aunt beats Abeo very badly for not doing her chores well. She has been beaten so badly that she had many wounds. Abeo tries to tell her mother but her mother does not believe her.

Story 2: Rakiya
Married at 12 in Nigeria. Rakiya sells bean cakes by the side of the road to pay for food and her boys schooling. As a young girl, she dreamed of an education for herself. But she would never see the inside of a classroom. Instead, betrothed at 11 and married at 12, she was continuously raped within marriage. Her own father beat her into submitting to her husband. And two months before her 13th birthday, she delivered her first child.

Story 3: Bem
Bem, 15 years old was made to work 12 hours a day in a field in difficult conditions. He thought he was going to be paid for his work and get money to help his family but he did not even get that. Instead he had to work long days breaking stones.

Allow a few groups to perform their role play and discuss the solutions they came up with.

Rights of the child
  • Right to life
  • Right to health care
  • Right to social security
  • Right to family life
  • Right to education
  • Right to play
  • Right to privacy
  • Right to be protected
  • Right to privacy
  • Rights of the disabled child