Ghana has made significant strides in addressing children’s right in the area of health, education, social welfare and justice since it ratified United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) three decades ago, Mrs Cynthia Morrison, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection has said.
She said in spite of all the successes chalked, there was still a lot of work to be done to ensure a Ghana that embraces all interests of children, adding that the government was poised to commit all the necessary resources to achieve that feat.
The minister made those remarks in a speech read on her behalf by Dr Afisah Zakariah, Chief Director of the Ministry at the validation of key findings on ‘Ghana Children’s Study’, a situational analysis survey undertaken in 2018 to find out the quality, accessibility and availability of education, health, water, sanitation and social welfare facilities available to children.
The occasion was also used to launch a campaign dubbed, “End Violence against Children” which sought to draw public attention to suppress all actions that perpetuate violence against children at the home, school, workplace, welfare institutions and community settings.
The study, which was the third undertaken by the Department of Children under the Ministry, was through the collaboration of OAfrica, a non-profit organisation which supports orphans and vulnerable children in Ghana with financial support from the European Union.
Mrs Morrison said the report revealed significant achievements made by the government in addressing children’s needs regarding schooling and provision of infrastructure, healthcare and sanitation facilities.
She said one of the major strategies for monitoring and measuring progress in the quest to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was through periodic situational analysis on the state of Africa’s children.
“The situational analysis study findings cover the views of children on issues affecting them, highlighting comprehensive details about the quality, accessibility and availability of education, health, water and sanitation, among others, which were available to children,” she added.
Mrs Morrison said, the study which revealed that about 57.2 per cent of the children sampled did not possess birth certificate was an indication for the need to further strengthen the capacities of Birth and Death Registry to make sure every child has a birth certificate.
She said another important revelation of the study was that some children still drop out of school due to varying reasons, in spite of the various social intervention programmes instituted by the government to increase enrolment, participation and retention of children in school.
Mrs Morrison said according to children sampled, corporal punishment still prevailed in the school, in spite of the tough stance taken by the Ghana Education Service.
She said the report also gave highlights of major policy gaps in the attempt to address the needs of the children, indicating that despite the achievement in promoting and protecting the right of children, there was still more to do to guarantee the enjoyment of the fundamental right of every Ghanaian child.
Mrs Morrison said that the research indicated that children experienced violence at home with 50.8 per cent corrected through caning and whipping, and 7.7 per cent through physical punishment with bare hands, while overwhelming children experienced punishment at school, with a little over 80 per cent of the children reporting that the corrective method used was caning.
She said the new Ghana Education Service guidelines required that cane should not be used in schools, saying, “We have therefore identified a substantial gap between policy and implementation and will focus on this on our second campaign.”
Mrs Morrison said it was imperative to find access to some of the challenges that emerged from the funding, saying that “it would be my greatest desire if the conclusions and recommendations of the report draw attention of all child rights and protection actors to find suitable actions for addressing children’s needs, and this includes the allocation of requisite resources at national, regional, local and household levels”.
Mr Platini Ashiagbor of OAfrica, said this year, their office would bring together about 500 non-governmental organisations and stakeholders in Ghana to participate in ‘KidsOurFuture NGO’ forum, which would focus on finding answers and solutions to the questions, and also creating a common platform for child rights in the country, especially for the most vulnerable.
He said at OAfrica, it was their belief that positive parenting was the best for children and that their campaign was designed to show the full horror of violence against children, in the hope that it would raise the necessary awareness to create a new culture of parenting.
BY LAWRENCE MARKWEI
