National Child Protection Week is marked annually to raise awareness about the rights of children.
From 28 March to 2 June we see events hosted everywhere raising awareness about protecting our children – but the question is, are children really safe?
As a parent myself, it’s never easy to leave my child at the day-care centre – not because I don’t trust them or they don’t know how to do their work – it’s because society has taken away the privilege of trusting others.
A lot still needs to be done to protect the future generation. No child should be deprived of their childhood because they now have to be locked up fearing what is out there.
Among Africans, it is said that it takes a village to raise a child but that saying has no meaning these days. Why? Because the same people who are supposed to protect a child are sometimes the same people who take the child’s life.
Are we that angry as a country that we now hurt our young? A lot has been going on, from protests to our leaders failing us and men killing women.
What are we feeding our children if all they see is violence, crime and death?
We have failed to protect them from simple things like the information we feed them. We shine the spotlight on children’s issues during Child Protection Week but do we revisit these issues and really understand where they come from?
How can we ensure our children’s safety as a society and parents? How do we make our communities safe enough for our children to be able to enjoy their childhood?
No child should be raped, killed, abused or even die because an adult had an evil idea.
We tell our children not to talk to strangers because they can be the perpetrators, but how do we tell them to fear their fathers, uncles, brothers or even mothers?
As a nation, we need healing but I’m not sure from what because a child brings so much joy, why would you want to harm them?
We need to really sit down and find new ways to address the evil in our society and be each other’s pillars of strength.
