By Kudzai Makombe
“Children are the flowers that never wither,” the late President Samora Machel of Mozambique once said.
Indeed, children are flowers of the world and future leaders to be nurtured and groomed.
With this in mind, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) is convening a conference on 25 to 27 November, in Dakar, Senegal under the theme “International Assistance to African Children.”
The conference, which is a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit on Children, will be attended by all African governments and foreign donors. Discussions will focus on ideas and methods of achieving sustainability in the wellbeing of children, as well as generating financial resources to do this.
“‘The problem is overcoming the ethos of Afro-pessimism that stands in the way of foreign aid,” says Richard Reid, UNICEF head of public affairs. “This pessimism is a convenient excuse not to send larger aid packages to African countries and is based on the questionable premise that Africa has never made headway towards development.”
This premise unfortunately neglects to note the fact that enormous strides have been made in Africa in various aspects of improving the welfare of children. In fact, over the past few decades, the continent has made numerous gains in health and education.
“Three-quarters of children under five are immunised in the majority of African countries. And it’s no mean feat that the immunisation of children under one is higher in Cairo and Addis Ababa than it is in New York or London,” says Djibril Diallo.
“I think the greatest difference is that Africans are taking their future in their own hands. The level of support given to children by African governments is a clear indication of how their priorities have changed.”
This has certainly been the case. In 1989, African Heads of State declared the 1990s as the “African Decade for Child Survival, Protection and Development.” The OAU summit of July 1990 adopted the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child which focused on specific issues such as reducing the effects of armed conflicts on children, immunization and the control of AIDS.
In the southern African region, positive steps are being taken towards improving children’s wellbeing.
Botswana was one of the first countries in Africa to achieve child immunisation through establishing more primary health care services in the rural and peri-urban areas. This resulted in reduced infant and under five mortality rates.
Solving the problems of children became a priority for Namibia’s independent government. President Sam Nujoma, recognising the pressing needs of Namibia’s children, declared his government’s ultimate goal to be “that of social justice for all our people, but especially for all our children.”
“Namibia has a lot going for it,” says Richard Morgan, formerly UNICEFs Senior Programme Officer in Windhoek. “In spite of the problems, and they are considerable, the goals of the 1990’s are imminently achievable.”
The Namibian government has already made positive gains in implementing policy on Universal Child Immunisation. Further, the period since independence has seen a sizable shift away from military and administrative expenditure to the social sectors. In 1991, military spending fell from 11 percent of the GNP to about 5 percent.
Various projects are being undertaken to improve the welfare of children in Zambia.
Non-governmental organisations have started a pilot project to address the needs of street children. Street Kids International (SKI), has set up a drop-in centre where about 40 children are getting basic education, information on health maintenance and free meals.
Roisin Burke, SKI advisor said, “Many of these children have not been to school and have no access to proper meals and health care. The SKI project aims to give them a chance for a decent life.”
Mozambique’s displaced children now have some hope. In 1990, there were over 200 000 children orphaned and more than 250 000 separated from their families or traumatised due to the war. Now, the Mozambican government has launched a coordinated tracing campaign to reunite displaced children with their families.
According to Bridget Walker, a British social worker employed by the Department of Social Welfare, relatives of the children are being traced in roughly 70 percent of the cases.
Jose, a thirteen-year-old boy was recently reunited with his parents after having been abducted by the MNR two years ago. His parents, themselves displaced were more than elated when they discovered his face among photographs of children being circulated in the village where they are now settled.
“We did not think we would ever find him again,” his father said with tears in his eyes. “It has been more than two years and we had almost given up hope.”
Zimbabwe bas stood as a fine example in Africa with its improvements in the social welfare of children. In the post-independence era, great progress was made in education, with primary-school enrolments doubling from 52 percent to 100 percent. Free health care, programmes on immunisation as well as maternal health resulted in a dramatic reduction in infant mortality rates.
However, despite the progress and concern, Africa now finds itself in a very difficult economic position. Debt has reached unprecedented levels and commodity prices remain low. Economic recovery programmes involving cut-backs in public sector subsidies, retrenchment, price rises of basic goods and cost recovery measures in the social sectors are taking their toll. This, coupled with drought and war, is eroding the gains that have been made in the wellbeing of children.
In Zimbabwe, the drought is proving to be a factor in an increase of infant mortality rates. According to the country’s health minister, at least 1.5 million children under the age of five are malnourished due to drought-related food shortages. Many schools, particularly in the rural areas, are reporting that children, especially those in the first to third grades, are fainting or remaining home as a result of hunger.
Mozambique and Angola are among the countries with the highest infant mortality rates in the world. The war has resulted in the destruction of health facilities and schools.
“Apart from being deprived of access to health care and education, the Mozambican child is also a victim of brutalisation by the armed bandits who teach them how to kill their own parents,” says President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique.
Children are often kidnapped and forced to join the MNR. They are given military training and forced to kill. Mozambicans interviewed by the local new agency AIM give the average age of the attackers as 15 years.
“You have children who are forced to either kill or watch their own parents being killed as a way to destroy their moral values and make them malleable for training as combatants,” Clarence Schubert, UNICEF Policy Advisor on Children in Especially Difficult Circumstances, said in a UN radio interview.
There are large numbers of disabled children, particularly in Angola, which has one of the highest number of amputees in the world.
The effects on children of the wars in Mozambique and Angola are carried over the borders.
An influx of Mozambican refugees to neighbouring countries has resulted in a life characterised by extreme poverty, malnutrition and early marriage for refugee children. In Zimbabwe, an increasing number of Mozambican refugee children are winding up on the streets of the urban centres as street children.
With the prospect of peace in both countries, an improvement in living standards for regional children is expected.
However, this requires the full participation of the international community. They have an important role to play in addressing the growing gap between the rich and poor, the north and south, and between children in different parts of the world.
The enormous debt burden and unfavourable international conditions in relation to trade are issues which affect the present and future rights of poor children in the south. Clear priorities must be given to an intensification of peace initiatives.
A case in point is South Africa where the system has ensured that children do not have even the most basic rights to shelter and protection from their care-givers. There were an estimated 9000 homeless children in South Africa in 1988 and their numbers have continued to increase.
The South African government’s answer to the problem of homeless street children tends to be imprisonment by the government. According to social workers, more than 500 children under 21 are being ‘held as trial prisoners at Pollsmoor Prison.
The spates of violence in South Africa have left many children both physically and psychologically scarred. At Ikhayalami pre-school near Mzimhlope hostel in Soweto, Principal Caroline Tikolo says that the children are affected by the violence. “When they hear guns, they panic and run around and they want to watch what’s happening at the fence.” During playtime, their favourite game is one where they use plastic bags to make headbands, grab anything that will suffice for a ‘traditional weapon’ and run around ‘killing’ each other.
This should not be allowed to continue happening. The present generation of world leaders must take upon themselves the responsibility of ensuring a better future for their children. In their 1990 Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children, world leaders reiterated their commitment to protect the lives and to diminish enormously the suffering of children.
They also committed themselves to promoting the full development of children’s human potential and to make them aware of their needs, rights and opportunities.
It is our hope that the leaders will live up to this declaration.
