African children deserve better from their govts

By Vincent Nuwagaba


Published by Daily Monitor on Tuesday, June 16 2009 at 00:00

As we mark the African Child Day today, an event commemorated every June 16, we should reflect on the Ugandan child. From a human rights angle, the Ugandan child is a classic case of the Wretched of the Earth, to use Franz Fanon's parlance. We have many laws/human rights instruments both local and international to defend the rights of the children here in Uganda.

Yet child abuse continues unabated despite crucial legal/human rights instruments such as ILO Conventions 182, 38 & 81 which are Worst forms of Child Labour Convention, Minimum Age Convention, Labour Inspection Convention, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and many domestic laws. Accordingly, we are not short of legislative and human rights instruments. Nonetheless, law enforcement has eluded this country.

As we celebrate the Day of the African Child, the following crucial issues ought to be addressed: Child labour, the plight of street children, child prostitution, child sacrifice, defilement, child neglect, child trafficking and the socio-economic welfare of our children with emphasis put on education and health. It is apparent the quality of Universal Primary Education is wanting, to say the least.

Many believe putting one's child in a UPE school is synonymous with sentencing them to perpetual ignorance and killing their future. Our health centres are equally death traps and this puts our children at risk. The situation is made more precarious when it comes to HIV/Aids infected and affected children. Most of them are on the streets as they lost their parents and have nobody to take care of them. Ultimately, they have turned into petty thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts and criminals of all sorts.

Foundation for Human Rights Initiative carries out research on juvenile justice but so far the findings reveal horrific and horrendous experiences that our children go through. When you visit courts, you find that the criminal offence with the highest frequency is defilement with some heartless parents defiling their own children.

Cases of worst forms of child labour abound; with some children working in quarries. This is hazardous to children both physically and mentally.

Ironically, these depraved practices are not African! Africans are supposed to be guided by the philosophy of Ubuntu. Ubuntu means being humane and is concomitant with values of love, mutual respect and most importantly, social responsibility.

Ubuntu resonates very well with the human rights movement whose cornerstone is threefold: human dignity, human welfare and equality. Although the wave is in favour of liberal democracy which accentuates the primacy of the individual liberties and interests, I am of the view that Africans must embrace social democracy. It is social democracy that will ensure the provision of the socio-economic needs for our people such as health, education and jobs.

The African Child, particularly the Ugandan child, is a victim of individualism. Let us reflect on the welfare of our children, for the future lies in them and they must be helped to actualise their full potential. I make a passionate call for prioritising the needs of our down-trodden children. For God and my country!

Mr Nuwagaba is a secretary for the Pan African Movement, Uganda chapter and works with the research division of Foundation for Human Rights Initiative.
Vnuwagaba@gmail.com