Protecting Children’s Rights

The article by Afua Twum-Danso, accurately reflects what is happening to children all over Africa. Here in Kenya, the Children's Act 2000 captures the ideals set by CRC - including the four key pillars of non-discrimination, best interest of child, survival and development, and the right to be heard and listened to - and yet this has not brought an end to the suffering of the majority of our children. Every day in our city streets, we meet street children and the children's department does not take a proactive role to put them into safe protective custody. In our schools, we have evidence of school dropouts, yet our Education Ministry does nothing about it. In our homes, we employ child domestic workers and pay them peanuts. Some times we assault, abuse and subject them to physical, emotional and mental trauma. When it becomes too much, some well-meaning estate mamas will organize rescue missions for these children in the full glare of the mass media, but that is as far as public awareness of the matter goes. We cannot be sure that these perpetrators see the light of day in a courtroom. We 'the people’ have set OVCs adrift in a sea of adversity; we view them as ‘other peoples concerns’. These ‘other people’ could be their aged grandparents or impoverished relatives or civil society. These are people who operate on shoestring budgets, barely enough to sustain themselves, let alone additional mouths. In research done in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda by Human Rights Watch, it is observed that ‘governments are content to let the poor help the poor rather than assuming responsibility for children whose families had been decimated by HIV/Aids’.