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
