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Protect Africa`s children for continent`s prosperity
2007-06-16 08:54:59
By Rose Mwalongo
Today is the Day of the African Child and every Africa Country is supposed to mark it in a manner it deems fit.
Whatever we might be doing as Tanzanian, we need to sit back and examine what we have done for the children of this country.
This reminds me of a story I came across in one of the local newspapers in which a farther tortured her daughter by burning her simply because she had requested 500/- to buy exercise books.
One wonders if the man is really the daughter`s father. Such cruelty is unthinkable.
Yet it is not an isolated case. We all can recount several incidents of child cruelty and abuse in our areas some of which have been committed by educated and well to do people.
Consequently, some children have been forced to go into the streets and live a horrible life.
These are children from the continent for whom we have designated a special day.
Torture and mistreatment are just some of those things.
But there are children who are forced into unsafe sex by people who want to earn money through them, while others are forced into this grim experience to whet the sexual appetite of lusty rich men.
There are also those who have been forced to take guns and fight in wars, which they know nothing about.
Generally, African children live in agony, trauma, torture and humiliation because parents have neglected them, politicians have exploited them and the rich have abused them.
This is to say the list about hunger, poverty and disease, which are common in many poor African families.
A recent report published by Africa Recovery, United Nations publication, says that statistics bear grim witness to the plight of African children.
`During a decade that saw over 100 countries slash mortality rates for children under five by 20 per cent or more), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports, the rate for Africa declined by just 3 per cent overall, and actually increased in nine African countries.
The under-five mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, at 175 per thousand in 2000, was more than double the world average of 81 per thousand and nearly 30 times higher than that of children in developed countries.`
Chronic malnutrition remains widespread in Africa, and the target of a 50 per cent reduction of malnutrition in children under five is far out of reach.
One in three Africans is malnourished and, despite improvements in some countries, the absolute number of hungry children rose during the decade.
Statistics on low birth weight reveal that an estimated one in eight African babies — some 3.1 million infants — is born underweight each year.
African children were beset by two other, largely unanticipated calamities during the 1990s: AIDS and war.
Of the 580,000 people under age 15 who died of AIDS in 2001, a staggering 500,000 — nearly nine out of 10 — were African.
Of the 2.7 million HIV-positive people under age 15 around the world in 2001, 2.4 million were in Africa.
Tuberculosis infection rates, closely associated with HIV/AIDS, have also soared, from an African incidence rate of 16 per 100,000 in 1993 to 52 per 100,000 at the end of 1999. More than 13 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS, over 12 million of them in Africa.
The impact of the pandemic on children has been catastrophic.
The most important to the young — parents, teachers, doctors, peers and siblings — fall ill and die, causing close-knit families and communities to disintegrate.
War too has wiped out advances for children in many African countries.
Nowhere has conflict had a more devastating impact on African children than in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where estimates of the number of war deaths since fighting began in 1998 reach as high as 2.5 million — the great majority of them women and children.
In 1999, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that six of the 10 countries generating the largest number of refugees were African, and that overall, more than 6 million Africans had been displaced because of conflict.
Children are not only the targets of violence, but also its perpetrators, press-ganged into government and rebel militaries alike and sometimes forced to commit brutal atrocities against members of their own families.
The non-governmental Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers estimates that children aged 15 and younger are currently engaged in combat in 10 African countries and serves on active duty in others.`
The situation is hopeless for African children. We have a long way to go to improve the quality of life of many children who continue to suffering for various reasons.
As we mark this day, I would like to urge African governments to sit down and sort out their conflicts to stop wars that have destroyed the African child physically, morally and psychologically.
Further, more efforts should be directed against HIV/AIDS and other diseases that continue to claim the lives of children particularly those under five years of age.
They should also fight vices like child labor and sex slavery in a bid to improve the quality of children.
However, the bottom-line is for the governments to enforce all laws, rules and regulations that protect children and guarantee them their rights.
The Day of the African Child should thus serve as a reminder for us to uphold the rights of our children teach them our cultural values and mould them into good men and women on whom we shall pass over the leadership of this country.
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