Children in danger: Stop the violence

Africa’s prospects for attaining peace risk being undermined unless action is taken to reel in the horrific violence inflicted on the continent’s children, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.

Friday 16th June is the Day of the African Child. It marks the 1976 shooting of school children protesting apartheid in the South African township of Soweto. Three decades on, that anniversary is being used to draw attention to the continued violence suffered by children in Africa.

In the first of a series of six articles from West Africa, entitled “Children in Danger”, IRIN interviews Jean-Claude Legrand, regional adviser on child protection for UNICEF.

QUESTION: It’s the day of the African child on Friday the 16th of June. Why, this year, is the focus on violence?

ANSWER: The decision is taken by the board of the African Union. This year the theme is violence against children and ties in with a UN study on violence against children to be presented in October. Every region of the world has very different problems, including here in Africa. It is important to look beyond global events, hear about problems related to Africa and raise issues specific to children.

Q: And what are the main protection issues facing children in West Africa?

A: Last year, a regional consultation highlighted four problem areas for children: that of domestic violence; violence in schools including in Koranic schools; child trafficking and harmful traditional practices chief among them being the practice of excision.

Q: Why is the issue of domestic violence particularly of concern in West Africa?

A: In other countries it is clear that in the post-conflict environment domestic violence against women and children increases. There is no data, so we cannot be sure that that is the case here, but a number of countries - Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea Bissau and others – are in a post-conflict environment. That makes it our obligation to find out.

Q: Why is violence in schools here different to other regions of the world?

A: In West Africa we are not talking about bullying or violence between children; the main concern is the issue of sexual exploitation of girls in schools by their teachers. Our studies have also shown that in some countries teachers use rape as a way of disciplining girls. We have found examples of this in Ghana, but it likely affects a lot of countries.

There is the problem of abuse of authority by headmasters and teachers – few countries in the region have developed monitoring mechanisms so parents and children have no way to complain and get redress. There is no enforcement of law. Often teachers are just moved on if there is a complaint, just transferring the problem somewhere else, not solving it. We need to make sure that schools are a safe place for children, not a place of abuse.

The situation of children in some Koranic schools is also of concern. Not all Koranic schools, but in some instances children are being recruited not to learn the Koran but to be exploited as street beggars. Senegal is the main example, but not the only one, where we can see there has been a distortion of an existing tradition.

This needs to be resolved by Koranic scholars who must work out minimum standards and a minimum curriculum for Koranic schools, including limits on time spent begging. Traditionally, children would beg a few hours on a Friday to learn humility but now they are begging eight hours a day seven days a week and getting beaten if they don’t bring back enough money. Children are being brought to Senegal from Guinea Bissau, Mauritania and other West African countries to beg on the streets and be exploited, linking in with the problem of child trafficking.

Q: You mentioned harmful traditional practices, among those would you include the traditional practice of adoption, the gifting of a child to a better off relative or family friend?

A: Yes, that is a clear illustration of what is happening in our region and the complexity of child protection issues in West Africa. More than 50 percent of children are not with their biological parents but gifted to another family to take care of them – this was a traditional mechanism of solidarity which had a strong value and often provided opportunities for poor children in return for their domestic work. But that has changed and a mechanism for solidarity and support is in some instances being used to economically exploit children and once again is closely linked to the problem of child trafficking.

Q: How is UNICEF working to protect children, especially when they are not with their biological parents?

A: We are in a region where there is a huge tradition of migration. The solution does not lie in the restriction of the movement of people, but we have to ensure that children still have support outside of their community, can find support and are not isolated.

In West Africa, hundreds of thousands of young girls aged between eight and 16 years old move every year from their villages to work with families in towns. If you allow a girl like that to get two hours of education once a week, she is not only getting an education, but a sense of her own importance. She is brought in connection with social workers – a teacher is a social worker. She gets in touch with other children in the same situation and her employer knows that anything done to her will be made known to a wider group of people. This is the best protection you can offer to a child.

If that child knows where to go or who to call that also helps. UNICEF has started to provide toll free telephone lines for children connecting them to social services. If a child is in danger and knows where to go to ask for support then you develop a system of social protection which is efficient in the context of the region. A region where law enforcement and social services do not have the capacity to protect children.

Q: Are West African governments helpful and providing enough support in tackling child protection issues?

A: There is more and more recognition of the problems and a willingness to address them. But we need to understand the limited capacities of governments in many areas, including justice, police and social welfare provision for children – so they can’t do it alone. It needs to be a joint response with NGOs and UN agencies.

Q: UNICEF has been operating in the region throughout the last 25 years - why in that time have children’s lives got more difficult?

A: I think it is because they are African kids and you can see what is happening to Africa, where poverty is on the rise. It’s clear that poverty has a huge impact on the situation of families. The situation is not about poverty but growing poverty and in order to survive people have to develop new survival strategies and very often these strategies make the children part of the economic network and often their rights as workers are not respected. The weakest part of the chain is exploited and that is the children.

Q: Does that mean it’s all about tackling poverty, that if poverty were wiped out then that would alleviate the burden on the African child?

A: It would provide the backbone but if you do not build a protective environment for children then things are not going to change. It’s just that wealthier people will be exploiting them. We need legislation, and enforcement of that legislation and all the necessary social services. Alleviating poverty alone will not be enough.

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