CHILDREN MATTERS

The protection of children's rights is a loaded issue. Here in Uganda, the COVID-19 pandemic brought this subject matter into even sharper focus, especially due to the impact of the closure of schools as one of Government’s measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. On Friday (October 5), legislators on Parliament’s gender committee gathered in Entebbe for a candid interaction with civil society organizations on all matters children. JOSEPH KIZZA unpacks what transpired.

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"I don't see ourselves securing anyone's future if we cannot secure the future of the children. So the onus is on every one of us to swing into action to ensure that these children are protected.”

Those were part of MP Flavia Kabahenda’s introductory remarks as an orientation workshop for legislators on the status of children got under way at Imperial Golf View Hotel in Entebbe on Friday.

Above all else, education is critical in securing the future of Uganda’s young generation, said Kabahenda, who is the Woman MP for Kyegegwa district and also the chairperson of Parliament’s gender committee.

During the half-day workshop organized by the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network (UCRNN), a coalition of child-focused civil society organizations, she led her team in discussing the task at hand for Uganda in the context of children.

“The teenage pregnancies that are now happening spell a very big problem ahead of us. Our future is not secure if we are going to have children whose fathers cannot be seen,” she said.

MP Flavia Kabahenda chairs the parliamentary committee on gender

The statistics are an eyesore.

“In my district alone, from January to December 2020, 4,034 children below 17 were pregnant. And we got those from only health centres. That means, those who did not come for antenatal, we can't tell,” revealed Kabahenda.

Out of the 4,034 teenagers, 120 were reportedly abused by their biological relatives, including fathers, and 301 are said to have been abused by men living with HIV.

The closure of schools shares part of the blame for this crisis, according to commentators and researchers.

A report published by Joining Forces, an alliance of the six largest child-focused international NGOs, shows that there has been a marked increase in child protection concerns since COVID-19 broke out in Uganda in March 2020.

The 'Keeping children safe in Uganda’s COVID-19 response' study found that there has been a rise in violence and abuse against children, increasing poverty and hunger, and more children forced into harmful practices, such as child labour and child marriage.

It also found that many children have not benefited from home learning.

For over a year now, Uganda has resisted intensified pressure to reopen its schools amid a pandemic that has seen more than 3,200 of its citizens succumb to the coronavirus.

Schools will reopen in January 2022

Towards the end of 2020, President Yoweri Museveni allowed schools to reopen in a phased manner, starting with finalists. But a second wave mid-this year forced all schools to close again – and the focus has since been on having teaching and non-teaching staff of education institutions vaccinated as part of the frontline priority category.

In his address last month (October), Museveni assured the nation that schools will reopen in January 2022, as will the rest of the economy.

‘Schools safer than homes’

CSOs argue that school-going children have borne the brunt of the closure of especially lower-level education institutions.

“Children are not safe at home,” said Iveta Ouvry, the country director of Plan International Uganda.

“Anybody who looks at the risk and looks at the statistics can see that despite of COVID, it is safer for children to be in school than to be at home."

Iveta Ouvry of Plan International Uganda says children are safer at school

Ouvry said: “Yes there were cases, yes there is risk, but we also know that young people and children manage COVID better than many of us. So I really hope we can work together and latest in January that schools are reopened."

But many will not have a second chance at schooling.

 The National Planning Authority projects that 30% of learners are unlikely to return to school upon the much-anticipated reopening.

Amid these concerns, mental health has been identified as a critical issue to address as learners prepare to return to physical schooling.

“In the two years that the children have spent in homes and the community, they have seen very horrific scenes - of violence, of wrong things. The homes are full of violence, the community is full of violence.” said MP Kabahenda.

“Therefore, even when we reopen the schools, these children need a mental healthcare system, a psycho-social support system, so that they can get back to the study environment.”

The gender committee chairperson rallied her fellow MPs to push for the "immediate" passing of the National School Health Policy, and said a "more robust" white paper on education is also needed “to facilitate the protection of the livelihood and welfare of children”.

Mbale district MP Miriam Mukhaye weighing in on the discussion

A reformed young population

About 56% of Uganda’s population is below 18 and 48.7% under the age of 15. This, according to Franco Tollea from the gender ministry, is “a very critical human resource we cannot ignore”.

“We need to reform or target them now or else it will be very difficult for us later,” said the assistant commissioner of children affairs at the ministry.

In his presentation on the National Child Policy 2020, Tollea was keen to underline that the community should be the first line of protection for children and for their total wellbeing, but that seems not to be the case.

The policy, which generally provides a framework for collective action, aspires for safer, healthier and education children who are developed to their full potential.

Franco Tollea from the gender ministry delivered a presentation on the National Child Policy

Initially, there was the National Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children Policy (2004). Along the way, implementing partners and government entities found it to be inadequate in addressing some aspects of the wellbeing of children, which paved the way for its review in 2016.

Ensuing extensive consultations revealed that a national policy on children was needed "because not all orphans are vulnerable".

"It was realized that some of the children who had been abused were from families which had parents. The consultations also showed that even people from rich families are vulnerable....Even now, some of the occurrences of teenage pregnancy are from those houses,” said Tollea.

There have been repeated calls for the strengthening of child rights governance and accountability mechanisms at all levels of the government, including in Parliament.

In 2016, Uganda became a pathfinder country, making it the second African nation to commit to develop a unified agenda for action to end violence against children.

A national survey on violence against children points to a considerable number of incidences of violence that impact on child growth and development. It is understood Government is putting together the report for that study.

"In most cases when we say violence against children, our minds run to defilement, rape, corporal punishment - which are all gross. But even when you put a child in a position that is likely to cause them harm, it still constitutes violence against children,” said Hope Wambi, the advocacy manager (violence against children prevention) at Raising Voices.

Violence against children can be physical, emotional/psychological, sexual or economic in nature.

“Words are powerful. And when it comes to a child or a woman, when we use sexual comments that are unwanted, it constitutes sexual violence. So it is not only the act,” underlined Wambi.

Hope Wambi of Raising Voices said words are powerful in the context of violence against children

The engaging session in Entebbe saw MPs weigh in on the discussion, including Sarah Najjuma (Nakaseke Woman and deputy chairperson of gender committee), Allan Mayanja (Nakaseke Central), Arthur Mboizi Waako (Budaka County), Pamela Nasiyo (Budaka Woman) and Miriam Mukhaye (Mbale Woman).

MPs Dr. Asiimwe Florence Akiiki (Masindi Woman), Joy Waako Peggy (Older Persons) and Dr. Abdul Byakatonda (Workers), as well as Parliament clerks also attended the orientation workshop.

The young people, the centre of discussion on the day, were also duly represented by Mastula Nakandi and Bridget Joan Namala – who pushed for intensified efforts into protection of their fellow young people.

Nakandi is a girls and young women’s advocate and Namala a youth advocate with Smart Youth Network Initiative and Plan International Uganda.

Mastula Nakandi is an advocate for young women and girls

Bridget Joan Namala is a youth advocate

"We believe children fall everywhere. And we don't want their voices to be silenced. Child participation is very key for us,” said Damon Wamara, the executive director of UCRNN.

“In the past, we have brought the children to engage with you, the Members of Parliament. Many of them have become strong advocates and they are now destined to become MPs, inspired by the advocacy work you do as legislators,” he added.

UCRNN executive director Damon Wamara said they want the voices of children to be heard

Wamara, a recipient of the 2020 Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labour, told the MPs that networking is a key ingredient of the work on issues of children.

“There are opportunities for us to have this committee interact with MPs of other countries to compare notes and exchange ideas to create rapport, especially around the issues of children.”

Crucially, the CSOs called for continuous engagement with parliamentarians on children matters. The hope is that such regular interaction will pave the way for the issues presented to Kabahenda’s committee to be discussed on the floor of Parliament.

They also want champions of children’s rights in the 11th Parliament as part of legislative advocacy.

Legislator Pamela Nasiyo is the immediate former chairperson of the Uganda Women Parliamentary Association (UWOPA), where the Sexual Offences Bill, 2019 was developed.

"We shall convince other Members of Parliament who are not on our committee to always advocate for the Ministry of Gender [Labour and Social Development] and the children's rights,” she promised the CSOs.

When Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Bill in May this year (2021), it meant, among other things, that marriages involving children and other sexual offences against children would be criminalized.

The same month, the House also enacted the law against human sacrifice. The then-Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, said that Parliament had provided an avenue for justice for all the victims of the vice, especially children.

"The action or inaction of Government impacts on children more than any other group,” said Dorah Musiimire of Plan International Uganda.

Presenting an overview of the international legal instruments on which Uganda’s laws are hinged, she urged MPs to allocate resources to domesticate the international laws, as well as popularize and make them accessible to constituents.

“I am happy that children are starting to participate meaningfully as opposed to tokenism.”

Dorah Musiimire of Plan International Uganda talked about the legal instruments on child protection

Musiimire urged the government to ratify the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The convention deals with international adoption, child laundering, and child trafficking in an effort to protect those involved from the corruption, abuses, and exploitation, which sometimes accompanies international adoption.

“We have had so many issues with alternative care. When they [adopted children] are taken out of this country, how do we know they are safe?”

Gender-based shelters

Meanwhile, legislator Kabahenda’s clarion call to her fellow leaders is to remember the obligations they have to the children.

Uganda's Vision 2040 has health, education, participation and protection as the fundamental children’s rights to be realized.

“We need to ensure that there is a government primary school at every parish. We need a seed secondary school at every sub-county,” said the Kyegegwa district Woman MP.

“We need a vocational school at every constituency as the government has assured us. The vocational school will provide second-chance education to girls who have been abused. We need comprehensive gender-based violence shelters which are not reception centres.”

Kabahenda said they are going to push Government to take over the gender-based violence shelters and provide one for every region - because every region has its unique gender-based violence issues.

Kabahenda says what they ask of CSOs is research-based information on children

A spirited call for NCA autonomy

During the workshop, the issue of the independence of the National Children Authority (NCA) came to the fore.

MPs feel that merging the authority with the gender ministry deprives it of the much-needed independence to adequately tackle the specific issues of children. For that reason, they are calling for its autonomy.

“When it [NCA] gets merged, the children have no Member of Parliament that represents them specifically – they cannot represent themselves because they are minors. So let us all stand and force Government to look at the unique needs of the children and let the National Children Authority stand alone to just look at the children's issues specifically and not be submerged into the sea of issues that are in the gender ministry,” rallied Kabahenda.

"All of you civil society, we want to hear your voices on this."

Else, "we shall lose the advocacy agenda and the children are going to continue to suffer”.

Nakaseke Central MP Allan Mayanja giving his comments

Kabahenda added: “You see the early childhood education being taken over by the private sector. 84% of the ECD [early childhood development] schools are managed by the private sector. That means it is not affordable. It is not accessible. It is not equitable. It is for the rich. 

“And that inequality does not give our children a safe future.”

On mindset and budgeting

In all the child protection talk, attitudes and budgeting are key priority areas. On a large scale, money is needed to sensitize the public.

"We need to change family and community perceptions,” said MP Kabahenda, who was critical of the finance ministry’s role in supporting this.

“We, as Parliament, recognize that the finance ministry does not seem to be aware of the children's concerns. And especially the concerns of mindset change and community sensitization.

"The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development had put in over sh900m as a request for them to carry out community sensitization. But what was appropriated was sh9m.”

Nakaseke Woman MP Sarah Najjuma is the deputy chairperson of the parliamentary gender committee

Turning to her fellow MPs, the gender committee chairperson said: “We need to look very keenly at the budget this time and ensure that money for mindset change and awareness is secured in the budget coming.”

Community litigation and having regular national dialogues on family and parenting were also identified as important interventions in child protection.

Children also need to be given spaces and environments to speak out - to tell their side of the stories.

For the collaborative efforts, the MPs on the gender committee asked the CSOs to share with them research-based information for effective legislative action.

“We need to look at robust legal frameworks and policies. If it requires us to review some of the policies of long ago, we need to do that,” said Kabahenda.

“We also need to address poverty truthfully - so that we can empower our households to make sure that they get rid of poverty so that their children grow up in dignified welfare systems.”