Monday, December 9, 2013

Ugandans Need Awareness Creation On Children's Rights

Despite the various legal instruments in place, Uganda is clearly making no progress in fighting Child rights violation, one of the key issues the Millennium Development Goals looked at.
 
Apart from the obvious acts of witchcraft that has seen people look for children to be sacrificed to demi-gods, and demonic fathers turning their manhood inside their blood daughters, a lot of other mischievous persons have turned babies into Gold and diamonds for making riches.
 
Today in Karamoja, the Tepeth and Pokot girls are living in fear. The two clans have persistently continued to practice Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) despite the prohibition of FGM Act of 2010. The practice of FGM remains a lucrative business for cultural surgeons in these communities. Girls of about 12 years below suffer this disgrace.
 
The rampant disappearance of babies from Mulago Hospital equally testifies that we really do not have any strong guard for our newborns. Sometimes I imagine that dealers in young babies have links with some people within the institutions where children have continued getting stolen in a strange way. Should we assume that dealers in children connive with security personnel and some unscrupulous hospital employees to rob poor mothers of their young ones for big cash? Could this be why the problem keeps recurring in a National Referral Hospital?
 
Other disturbing cases of sexual violence against children, child labour, trafficking and carnage keep coming and vanishing unresolved. Could it be the power of money preventing children from getting access to justice against rich adults who pay off their crimes to be hidden under the carpet?

One thing that surprises me however is that most key stakeholders and children advocates only come out to give mere strong verbal warnings when a particular case is already off beam, instead of having a practical policy in place to watch and swiftly clear this humiliation out of the nation. As a country, we lack the law enforcement strength yet a lot of laws are in place.
At the international level, the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child gives an interpretive guidance to the country’s Children’s Act. The act in turn splendidly explains major laws relating to the protection of children in Uganda.
Regionally, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child is in place. There is also the 1995 Constitution of Uganda that explores in different articles under Chapter four, the need to protect young people. 

However, in the face of all the above governmental documents, haunting stories of gross violence against infants have continued to frequently dominate the local media, let alone those the press cannot see. Do Ugandans really understand the existence of such laws or are the laws just a hip of paper work known only to some isolated few?
Available statistics on child mismanagement in Uganda keeps going up, yet in other countries and at a global scale the fight against the problem is contrarily dropping!

A recent media report indicates that on average 23 girls and women are raped every day in Uganda, a figure higher than that of maternal mortality rate which is at 16 mothers a day. On child labour, ILO reports that the global figure came down by a third between 2000 and 2012 from 245 million to 168 million correspondingly but in Uganda, UBOS says two million out of 18 million children suffer the brutality.
In order to fix this issue of national moral insecurity; government, Civil Society organisations and all child rights activities should do more vigorous and broader advocacy and awareness creation on the rights and privileges that children are entitled to. Secondly, tougher but workable policies need to be put in place to ensure that perpetrators of child abuse suffer rightful consequences. Ms. Karooro Okurut the Gender Minister, suggests a death sentence for defilers; if this is something workable - why not do it?

Mr. Owiny is a Child Rights defender

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