UN marks Day of the African Child with call to fight violence against youngsters

Celebrating the Day of the African Child today, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called on the world to recognize that youngsters are the continent’s greatest resource and rise to the challenge of helping them overcome the many scourges they face, including violence, this year’s theme.

“On this Day of the African Child, we celebrate children as the future of Africa,” UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said. “But we also recognize and address the considerable problems they face – from extreme poverty and conflict to malaria, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.”

The Day commemorates June 16, 1976, when thousands of black school children in Soweto, South Africa, took to the streets to protest the inferior quality of their education under the apartheid regime and to demand their right to be taught in their own language. Hundreds of boys and girls were shot and in the two weeks of protest that followed, more than 100 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured.

“This landmark event was a demonstration of great courage and conviction by the children of South Africa, who stood up for what they believed,” Veneman said. “It is a powerful reminder of the decisive role that children can have in bringing about change and of the importance of ensuring a quality basic education for all.”

Violence against children is a particularly pressing threat to the current and future well-being of Africa’s youngsters because of the continent’s disproportionate burden of conflict, extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS.

Children in emergencies are at particular risk of gender-based violence given their limited ability to protect themselves and the disruption of family and community protection. “It is hard to think of an act against girls and young women that can be more damaging or enduring than sexual violence,” Ms. Veneman said.

“Sexual violence is also a major factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is having a devastating impact on children, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, and the poverty that conflicts bring often leaves girls and young women destitute. For many of them, trading sex for survival becomes the only option.”

Women and children who flee their homes because of armed conflict become dramatically more vulnerable to violence, abuse and exploitation – which in turn heighten their risk of HIV infection. In Darfur, for example, where nearly 2 million people have been displaced by conflict, it is estimated that at least one-third of the victims of rape are children.

And because of HIV/AIDS, Africa’s children are losing their best protection – their parents. In sub-Saharan Africa, 12 million children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS.