Killing Them Softly: The Brutalisation of Africa’s Children

By Debbie Ariyo

The year 2004 was a paradox as far as worldwide child rights issues are concerned. As in previous years, 2004 was a woeful one for children in most developing countries around the world. Once again, figures, facts and statistics demonstrated that for at least half of the world’s children, childhood remained a sad, brutal and depressing experience. In Africa in particular, the year 2004 saw an increase in the number of children who are victims of conflict, HIV and AIDS, poverty and deprivation, exploitation and abuse.

Interestingly, a number of developments that should have heralded positive changes in the lives of the world’s children also occurred. The year 2004 marked the 15th year of the universal signing and embrace of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). All countries in the world, safe the United States and Somalia have signed the convention meant to be a universal template for the protection of childhood. Fifteen years down the line and the plight of the world’s children had not only deteriorated considerably, but according to the newly released State of the World’s Children Report 2005 by UNICEF, the lack of efforts by various governments around the world to live up to the UNCRC standard is causing permanent damage to children and is effectively putting childhood under threat.

Looking across the continent of Africa, it is easy to see how this is so. Although fewer wars were fought in Africa in 2004 compared to previous years, the emergence of conflict in Africa has been largely within countries, not between countries. Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of children are still recruited or abducted as soldiers. In Uganda, the war in the northern part of the country has had a significant impact on children who are targeted and mutilated by militia groups as a weapon of war. In the Congo, children, especially girls, are sexually violated and experience rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war. In countries like Angola and Sierra Leone which are in post war situations, children are victims of landmines, either directly or indirectly through an affected parent or guardian rendered disabled and thus losing their ability to earn a living. In countries like the Sudan and Somalia, thousands of children are still recruited or abducted as soldiers, are forced to witness violence and killing and are orphaned by violence.

The year 2004 saw the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS across Africa reached its apogee. The impact of HIV/AIDS on children is seen most dramatically in the wave of AIDS orphans that has now grown to 15 million worldwide. According to the World Bank, in 2001, at least 15 percent of children in 10 sub-Saharan African countries had lost one or both parents to AIDS or associated causes. Because of the 10-year time lag between infection and death, the number of orphans is expected to continue to rise. By 2010, it is estimated that 20 million children will have lost a parent to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

Again, according to the State of the World’s Children Report 2005, the death of a parent pervades every aspect of a child's life, from emotional well-being to physical security, mental development and overall health.

On a recent visit to Nyanza province in the Western part of Kenya, I was disturbed to witness the huge devastation caused by HIV/AIDS in that part of the country. This is the part of Kenya most affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Not only are children orphaned, in addition to the direct effects of the death of parents or guardians, the local practice of widow-inheritance or disinheritance and land grabbing has been accentuated by the impact of HIV/AIDS on the population. Orphaned children are often disinherited from their parents’ properties by uncaring family members. A large proportion end up as street children, with some involved in sniffing glue or solvents. They are also prone to sexual exploitation, bringing the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. A recent report on HIV/AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa also concluded that AIDS played an important role in pushing a significant percentage of Kenya's estimated 3.5 million working children into the labour market.

Poverty, with its debilitating impact on most African countries continues to undermine the quality of life of millions of children on the continent. More than half of Africa’s 600 million people still live on less than US$1 a day. Most African countries are poorer today than they were at independence in the 1960s. Forty per cent of children in Africa have never been to school – the only region in the world where the numbers of children out of school are rising.

Yet again, the State of the World’s Children Report examines the impact of poverty on childhood. It concludes that children living in poverty are deprived of their rights to survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm, exploitation and discrimination. It confirms the basic facts, that millions of children are severely deprived of nutrition, water, sanitation facilities, access to basic health-care services, shelter, education and information. It identifies gender discrimination as both a visible outcome and an underlying factor of severe deprivation.

Children whose rights to safety and dignity are denied are also impoverished. Each year, tens of millions of children are the victims of exploitation, violence and abuse, which rob them of their childhood, preventing them from achieving anything close to their full potential. In Western and Central Africa, the growth in the trafficking of children for various exploitative purposes has been attributed in the main to the impact of poverty and deprivation. In Nigeria, for instance, for decades children predominantly from poor rural communities such as Shaki in Oyo State, many parts of Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Benue and Kwara States have been recruited by traffickers and internally trafficked to cities like, Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Kano, Calabar and Port -Harcourt. Local NGOs estimate that altogether about 12 million Nigerian children are forced into labour and that about 80% of Nigerian children in forced labour are victims of trafficking

More recently, the trafficking of children across the continent of Africa has taken a new dimension with the growth in the trafficking of children across continents into developed European countries. In the UK where AFRUCA is based, recent reports indicate a growth in the trafficking of African children into the country for a variety of purposes, most especially domestic servitude. Most of the children are thought to be of Nigerian origin, although other countries are affected. In recognition of this, the UK government recently signed a pact with the government of Nigeria to collaborate on counter trafficking activities and thereby safeguard vulnerable children.

Yet this laudable step is a very tiny drop in the ocean of what is required to protect and safeguard African children from poverty and harm. The UNICEF State of the Children Report has clearly placed the blame for the brutalisation of childhood on the steps of various governments. By identifying the lack of efforts by governments around the world to live up to the UNCRC standard as causing permanent damage to children, the report is also effectively putting the solution to the problem on their doorsteps. According to Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF, “Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood,” Crucially, our governments must wake up and realise that by thinking children first and adopting socially responsible policies in all spheres of development that take account of children’s needs they will go a long way in making lives better for countless African children who currently experience pain and suffering.

Not only that, reversing the plethora of Africa’s problems and putting it on the path of growth requires harnessing its huge human capital to enable this happen. With half of its future generation brutalised as children, the future seems bleak unless changes happen as soon as possible.

Debbie Ariyo is Executive Director of AFRUCA – Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, a London based charity promoting the welfare of African children. www.afruca.org