Is Rural Africa No Place For Children?
So what do you do if there are places unfit for children to live? The obvious answer is to remove them, and of course this is what we look to do on an individual case. However how do you do that when you are no longer talking about individual children, or isolated cases, but when you are looking a a large scale portion of an entire continent? Obviously we cannot remove the majority of an entire continent’s children, and place them in better homes or situations, we must work on the ground to ensure they no longer face such disparaging hardship. So, you establish a full scale initiative to eradicate and fight the problem head on with sustainable solutions, or at least that was the plan in Africa. The former Organization of African Unity Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim said, at the Pan-African Forum for Children in May 2001, “African children have the worst life chances in the world”. Sadly little appears to have changed for the children in Africa.
In 2002 the African Union’s and the Pan-African Forum established the Africa Fit for Children initiative, and now five years later it appears the initiative has failed. In follow-up to the Second Pan-African Forum on Children, held in Cairo on Oct. 29, 2007, and in review of the initiative many have begun to see the holes in Africa’s plan for it’s children. Plan International, conducted a study in which they surveyed 1,000 children in 30 African countries, to see how their lives have change since the 2002 initiative.
A Plan International survey children said that not only where their lives not better than five years ago, they where actually worse. Increasing poverty, poor education and high unemployment where largely to blame. Children are always the hardest hit in times of economic hardship and crisis, and when families face poverty children become even more vulnerable, not only to hunger and disease, but to forced labor and trafficking. Children from poor families are often pulled from schools and sent to work, as families are pushed by economic necessity.
Tom Miller, Plan’s Chief Executive Officer said: “This is a wake up call for Africa - children tell us they are being left behind. Despite the efforts of African Union governments a large number of children have not seen any benefit in their lives. Worse still many feel things are going backwards. The message is clear, we can’t expect to improve the lives of children if we don’t involve the children themselves.” (Rural Africa Not Fit For Children)
The main priorities defined in the initiative included: an overall framework for the rights of the child in Africa; enhancing the life chances; overcoming HIV/AIDS; right to education; right to protection, including, legal and protection against violence, abuse and exploitation; and participation of youth and children.
The country specific questionnaire developed by the African Union Commission as part of a Mid-term Review of the AU Plan of Action on Children – ‘Africa Fit for Children’ was established to assess progress. The results of which will be submitted at the next UN Special Session on Children, which is to be held in New York on 11-12 December 2007.
Following the the Pan-African Forum on the Future of Children held in Cairo, which adopted the Africa Fit For Children initiative, Egypt in May, 2001, Kofi Annan made the following statement to the opening session of the United Nations Special Session on Children on May 9, 2002;
“Let us not make children pay for our failures any more. The children in this room are witnesses to our words. They and their peers in every land have a right to expect us to turn our words into action — and I repeat, they expect us to turn our words into action — and to build a world fit for children.” (Invest in us, African children tell world leaders)
One can only hope that over the next five years we heed these words, and the pleas of the children who’s lives have not improved, as we work to repair and rebuild the lives of children in rural Africa.