Anta
Fall, Child Protection Specialist for Save the Children International, Senegal,
has called on the government of The Gambia to impose stiffer punishment for
child abusers.
Madam
Fall said it was one thing having laws in place and another implementing them.
She
was speaking to reporters shortly after the opening of a two-day capacity
training workshop organised by Child Protection Alliance to build the
capacities of implementing partners on Child Safeguarding including Safe
Programming, facilitated by Save the Children International Child Protection
Specialist.
CPA
received funding from Save the Children International, as part of its 2017
Cooperation Agreement, to organise the two-day capacity building workshop on
Child Safe Guarding and Safe Programming for implementing partners.
Madam
Fall pointed out that The Gambia government was doing very well but needs to
reinforce the law in terms of legal framework on protecting children from all
forms of abuse.
She
highlighted that when a child is abused the charges against the alleged culprit
is very weak, noting that there needs to be tougher laws in place.
She
added: “We need laws to ensure social worker, state actors, and community
actors capacities are built to be able to take care of children’s abuse, report
and also ensure that when cases are reported, they are taken care of.”
She
said that in Africa, some Africans often think that to educate children you
need to beat them, adding that most of the child abuse cases are unfortunately
linked to social norms.
“We need to raise community awareness on child
protection so that they understand that when you abuse a child you are abusing
his or her right,” she said.
She
said at the end of the training they expect to have a pool of staff and civic
society organisation staff who would be aware of what child abuse is, and what
role to play when it occurs.
She
also called for the need to have cross border mechanisms that would ensure the
Gambian and Senegalese governments are in constant contact and collaboration.
Lamin
Fatty, Program Officer of Child Protection Alliance (CPA), stressed that the
objective of the training was to enable child protection actors to create
structures within communities that would be able to protect and promote the
welfare of children in order to have an enabling environment free from all
forms of violence against children, particularly the issue of corporal
punishment in schools, exploitation of children, and sexual abuse.
Mr
Fatty observed that exploitation of children has come up the scale again after
the change of government.
CPA
is creating awareness and also trying to create structures to be able to
monitor and report the issues of abuses in communities for them to take
ownership of protecting children, he said.
He
said government has committed itself by signing national and regional legal
instruments and has also domesticated some of the legal instruments,
particularly the Children’s Act 2005.
“It is not only about having laws in place but
protecting the rights of children,” he declared.
