MUMBAI: MTV Exit (End Exploitation and Trafficking) has won this year’s Asia-Pacific Child Rights Award for producing the music videoAll I Need for Radiohead.
The video gives an insight into the realities of exploitative child labour and shows that we are all touched by it no matter where we live and that we all have a role to play in ending child exploitation and trafficking.
Created by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa), ABU and Unicef in 2001, the award is given annually to the best television programme on child rights issue produced in the Asia Pacific region. This year, the award received nearly 40 entries from 15 countries including India, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Thailand.
Radiohead, an alternative rock band from the UK, gave MTV Exit the right to use All I Need off their In Rainbows album and to produce the official video for the single as a way to reach young people and show them the realities of trafficking and exploitative child labour.
The music video is shown in split screen: one side depicting a day in the life of a young boy from an affluent country; the other showing the day in the life of a boy being forced to work in a sweatshop.
MTV Exit campaign director Simon Goff says, “The idea of fusing a social message into a creative format like a music video was something that we had wanted to experiment with for some time. By integrating the message into this format, we could reach many more people than if we created a standard public service announcement."
This music video is part of the MTV Exit campaign, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking.
Casbaa CEO Simon Twiston Davies says, “Broadcast platforms of all kinds are one of the most powerful tools for educating and promoting child rights issues. On behalf of the industry, Casbaa salutes the on-going participation of broadcasters from across the Asia Pacific region in this year’s Award process.”
The winning entry was selected by a panel of jurors made up of television producers and industry representatives. They included Hitoshi Furukawa of Children‘s Programmes Department of NHK Educational Corporation (Japan), Bella Stjerne of SVT Sveriges Television (Sweden), Aparna Sanyal of Mixed Media Productions (India), Jesse Stern of InFocus Asia (Thailand), Syahrizan Mansor of Nickelodeon (Singapore) and Virginia Lim of SPE Networks (Singapore).