Effective child protection requires strict laws and guidelines. In Uganda, there are many positive steps on paper – for example, there is a national strategy to end violence against children in schools, and child marriage, corporal punishment and other forms of abuse are illegal. But in reality, these laws are rarely enforced or resourced. Many people and officials do not know them. Abusers often go unpunished. Save the Children is committed to providing more resources to implement and enforce these laws, and we are developing localized and child-friendly versions to make them more accessible to communities. Street children are of particular concern. Today`s toxic combination of economic and social factors is forcing more and more children to take to the streets across the country. According to a June 17 and 17 Human Rights Watch report. July 2014 with the title Where Do You Want Us to Go?` Abuses against street children in Uganda, Uganda, do not protect homeless children, especially from police and other violence. Street children in Uganda`s urban centres are exposed to violence, physical and sexual abuse.
To end violence against children in Uganda, we must work together. The United Global Coalition of Forces brings together six leading children`s rights organizations: Save the Children, Child Fund, Plan International, SOS Children`s Villages, Terre des Hommes and World Vision. In Uganda, the coalition is working to end corporal punishment and help children develop their own solutions to end violence in schools. Yes, young children on the street should not be violently beaten and other dangerous acts committed in order to then love illegal sex, this really violates the rights of the child. They certainly find themselves forced to live on the streets because their parents are dead and have serious wars in their ares.in conclusion I thank this organization for the fight against it. The Children`s Act has filled an important gap. But good policies without implementation are of little use, and there is an urgent need to ensure that the country`s justice system is fully in line with the right of all children – as set out in Article 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – to be treated in a way that promotes their sense of dignity and worth. In 2013, the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) and Penal Reform International (PRI) produced a joint review of data on juvenile justice in Uganda and produced a report entitled A review of law and policy to prevent and remedy violence against children in police and pre-trial detention in Uganda. The report revealed interesting but critical issues that require urgent attention. Nevertheless, in addition to the ongoing process of reviewing and certifying the draft OFWG Child Protection Training Manual in Caring for Children while Protecting Children, the GTPC is seeking funding partnerships and education staff to protect children, share experiences and learn together.
and keep the Government`s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development informed of progress. The child protection context in Uganda raises a number of questions: an effective and well-funded national child protection system is essential to ensure that we can prevent and respond to violence against children. But in Uganda, the system is fragmented and weak – the remittance system is poorly coordinated, services for survivors are scarce, children are not empowered to speak out and report abuse, and traditional beliefs often perpetuate some forms of violence. Most cases go unreported, and only 32% of reported cases result in arrests. By 2025, the Child Protection Programme aims to free all Ugandan children from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, including harmful practices, and to realize their right to legal identity by: Although the fact that some street children commit crimes is undisputed, the majority of them are motivated by poverty that we cannot treat or prevent without socio-economic reforms. of great scope. Denis Angeri of the Foundation for the Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) Uganda welcomes the Ugandan government`s commitment to children`s rights, but says much more needs to be done to protect children who have come into conflict with the law. In particular, stricter measures are needed to protect the growing number of street children who should be protected, but often arrested by the police, held in police cells with other offenders and exposed to a high risk of abuse and violence. Uganda adopted chapter 59 of the Children Act of the Laws of Uganda on 1 August 1997. The Children`s Act transposes into national law the rights of the child and the protection, duties and related responsibilities contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ACRWC. It helped me understand how to protect every child I see on the streets of Uganda.
The Children`s Act also enacts constitutional provisions relating to children. The Children`s Act was enacted to: ♣ reform and merge the Children`s Act; providing care, protection and maintenance of children; ♣ ♣ provide local authority support to children; establishment of the Family and Children`s Court; ♣ and making arrangements for children charged with criminal offences and♣ other related purposes. Although the system of care and protection is conceptually distinct from the criminal justice system, the two systems appear to merge in practice. Both groups of children are apprehended and detained in the same police cells and treated in the same way in court. Human rights and rights groups, in particular ANPPCAN, are alarmed by the physical and sexual abuse of Ugandan street children and the increasing burden of HIV/AIDS on orphans, forcing them prematurely to play adult roles; associated with insufficient access to education, especially for girls. Forty per cent of girls in Uganda are married before the age of 18. One in four teenage girls over the age of 15 has already given birth to a child or is pregnant. This has devastating effects on their future – it forces children not to be educated, keeps them trapped in a cycle of poverty and endangers the lives of young mothers and their babies. Nevertheless, there are still a number of challenges to overcome. Uganda`s severe economic and social difficulties had prevented the full realization of children`s rights, and concern was expressed that legislation was insufficient to ensure the “physical and mental integrity” of all children. Similarly, a government working group tasked with developing guidelines for the establishment of public day-care centres has sought advice on child protection so that they can better understand the level of risk to children in these facilities and identify contextually appropriate mitigation measures in the guidelines.
The relevance of child protection in Uganda is reflected in the responsiveness of those who have received cpWG training. Member institutions, in particular the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (RESPS), Save the Children and World Vision Uganda, logistically facilitated the manual development, pre-testing and orientation of other actors for trainers. However, the ongoing challenge is that there is no national framework that monitors the implementation of child protection. The GTPC`s efforts on this front have been limited by the different conceptualization and use of the term “policy”, as government policy refers to a guiding framework with a national perspective and not applicable within the jurisdiction of a single institution. Impressed by what the two organizations have done, she launched a formal request to Plan Uganda with government support for technical assistance in training national trainers to protect children. The application was approved and a team of 20 trainers from 11 institutions, including the government ministry, was trained as child protection trainers by Ms Mariama Deschamps, Child Protection Policy Officer at Plan International UK. At the national level, the Children Act Cap. 59 introduced all guarantees for the rights of all children in the country. The enactment of the Children`s Act was a major step forward in harmonizing national laws with the international treaties that Uganda had signed and ratified. We work with teachers and schools to promote alternative methods of positive discipline based on mutual respect and participation, and establish children`s councils to develop more effective and appropriate disciplinary measures. We also work with schools, officials and local communities to monitor and address other forms of violence in schools, such as sexual abuse and bullying. The AVSI Foundation in Uganda is one such agency that has integrated child protection into its child protection policy, a product that has been hailed as a good practice within the global AVSI family.
At the joint level, instructors held a one-day orientation session on parental control for representatives of THE GTPC institutions, and after that, two institutions requested comprehensive training for their staff and staff. As a child rights activist, I am particularly concerned about the time that elapses between the first appearance and the closure of cases. Overburdened judicial roles ensure that cases drag on. This is worrying, especially when children are detained in the juvenile investigation home or when children aged 15 and over are detained with adults in detention centres awaiting trial. I think we need to do more: a child learns better when he feels safe and protected. Corporal punishment is illegal in Uganda, but it is still commonly practised – 90% of children say so is the first time they have been physically abused at school by a teacher. Many teachers and parents believe that violence is necessary to teach discipline, but it has an extremely negative impact on a child`s learning and well-being. Although trainers have short- and long-term plans to promote child protection throughout the country, these plans have not been fully implemented due to lack of funding.