Children

The poor southern African country of Malawi, is finally working to take a deeper look into the scale of child trafficking within its borders. Earlier this fall many, including over 200 school children, took to the streets to demand better protection for the countries children, and demand an end to child abuse.

“How is Malawi going to have educated future leaders if we don’t stop abusing children? How are we, children of Malawi, expected to thrive and excel in school when we continue to experience violence and abuse in the hands of the very same people who should be protecting us?” asked 16-year-old child parliamentarian Charles Kabera (Stop Child Abuse campaign asks for change at a policy level).

The country which according to a 2006 UNICEF report, has an estimated 30%, some one million, of its children between 5-14 years old in child labor practices. The high instances of child labor gives way to other indicators of children’s rights violations, such as having one of the regions highest school drop out rates. The countries high level of AIDS orphans, also gives substantial opportunity for exploitation and abuse, and thus the magnitude of child trafficking must not be over looked. Children are most often forced into labor, or trafficked to work in agriculture, with live stock, as domestic servants, and in the commercial sex industry. Last month a UNICEF launched a large scale investigative study in Malawi to determine the enormity of child trafficking in the country.

“We don’t have any data on child trafficking in Malawi and so we want to carry out a research to provide an indication on the magnitude of the problem,” Linda Kabwila-Kalenga, UNICEF’s Child Protection Officer in Malawi. (Child trafficking study in Malawi)

The Malawian government has made plans to increase child protection officers, by more than twice as much, however many argue this is not near enough to end the problem of child labor or child trafficking. The main reason for argument fails to the root of the problem, poverty and corruption, and its inability to be reached or effectivly monitored. Human rights groups also argue that there is not enough anti-trafficking legislation, and thus little prosecution ensues. Regardless the government is adamant about increasing the number officers assigned to monitor trafficking and child labor from 400 to 1,000.

“Their contribution towards combating child labour and human trafficking has been overwhelming. They work as frontline officers and report any suspicious cases of human trafficking to labour officers and social welfare officers in their respective districts throughout Malawi. The officers are deployed in all 193 constituencies represented in the national assembly, and are trained to recognise child labour and trafficking activities. “Each constituency has four child protection officers, but they are hardly enough. With funding from the National Aids Commission (NAC), we will be training additional officers,” Penson Kilembe, director of child development affairs in the Ministry of Women and Child Development said.(Government intensifies campaign against child labour)

The Malawian government has established control measures, such as requiring parents to apply for children’s passports in person and present proof of identity as well as proof of parental status, in order to detect and prevent the trafficking of children. The recently approved by the Cabinet the Child Care, Protection and Justice Bill, places a life sentence on those convicted of child trafficking, it is also anticipated to be tabled in parliament very shortly.

While the efforts of UNICEF and the government of Malawi are admirable, the harsh reality is that the solution is a long way off, and more efforts will have to be made in the areas of poverty reduction, education, and awareness if true and lasting solution is to ever be met.  Malawi is only starting to dig into this problem, and while we must uncover the true scale of the problem, more must be done to establish sustainable solutions at the village level.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogroll, Foreign Policy Association, Great Decisions Blogs, Children, Child Trafficking, Child Labor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.