EDITORIAL: Day of the African Child: We must not abdicate our responsibility

Rwanda, yesterday, joined the rest of Africa to commemorate the annual Day of the African Child. The Day is an opportunity to reflect on the rights of the African child and recommit to bringing down the barriers to children’s rights. This year’s theme, “25 years after the adoption of the African Children’s Charter: Accelerating our collective efforts to end child marriage in Africa”, focused on the need to stop child marriages. Child marriage is just one of a wide-range of challenges that continue to afflict the African girl child. Chauvinistic attitudes in many parts of Africa mean that girls are treated as if they are naturally inferior to their male counterparts, and are often deprived of education, among other basic rights. Homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and child labour are some of the other major challenges facing the African child. In other cases, like we have seen in the wake of the recent Burundian refugee influx into Rwanda and elsewhere in the region, we condemn our children to such harsh conditions as refugee life, often unaccompanied, and at the risk of contracting killer diseases. These are just a few examples of how we have continued to fail our children, treating them in a manner that compromises their future and, thus, the continent’s. African States need to do more to protect the African child, we need to rediscover and reembrace our ‘Ubuntu’ values and the communal approach to child upbringing. In Rwanda, the campaign ‘Fata umwana wese nk’uwawe”, loosely translated to mean ‘Treat every child as yours’, has seen many compassionate well-wishers volunteer to take in and educate homeless children. The drive, particularly promoted by the First Lady, Jeannette Kagame, has made a whole lot of difference, seeing as thousands of parentless children have been able to leave orphanages and join foster families where they are receiving fitting upbringing. Also laudable are recently announced measures to roll back school dropout rate, chief of which is the punitive action against any adult, be it a parent, guardian, school administrator, teacher or employer, responsible for any child’s dropping out of school. We owe it to our posterity to provide our children with a safe and conducive environment in which to grow, thrive and reach their full potential.

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EDITORIAL: Day of the African Child: We must not abdicate our responsibility