World Vision awards exemplary behavior to protect children from abuse
It’s a been a year that Child Protection Officers from World Vision Mozambique became regular costumers of court houses, not as lawyers but following the progress of judging sessions of child rapist in the community, among them teachers, straight relatives such as uncles and grand fathers.
At first glance the number of child abuses apparently increased in the community but is quickly explained that it is a result of the field work carried out in the community to disseminate child rights and encouragement to the community members to report to the authorities any type of abuse for due treatment.
“Before the project starts its activities, child abuse was handled through an agreement between the rapist and the family of the abused child. The rapist could pay a certain amount of money and some cases marry the child as part of the agreement” explained Alda Vedor, Child Protection project manager, in Mozambique’s southern Gaza province.
Alda Vedor, is well known within the organization for her strong Christian faith, she has been in front of the project in the past 8 months and sadly tells how difficult it is to hear that a child has been abused.
“When my co-workers walk into my office or the wire phone rings and the person in the other side tells me that we have another report of a child that has been abused, I feel sorry about it, not as manager but as a person” says Alda.
The communities are vulnerable to child abuse because of a number of reasons among them limited capacity from the children’s parents to provide safe houses and yard for children to play.
Regular absences of the parents who spent most of their time working in the farms, leaving children at their own in unpopulated communities is also pointed out as one of the main reasons for children’s vulnerability.
According to Alda some of the incidents leave her sleepless because children are yet innocent and not aware of many things.
“The first thing that comes to my mind when a child is abused is, my God what about the child health status now, and the trauma that the child has been exposed to”, said Alda with a choking expression like if she just been informed about an incident.
Her concern to the health status of the child is quickly explained because Gaza stands as the most HIV infected province of Mozambique with a rate of 25 per cent. Moreover there has been a belief that HIV infected people particular men could cure themselves if involved with virgin child.
This and other reasons led to an initiative under the name Child Protection Champions to award individuals who exemplary contributed to discourage these practices in the community, they reported to the police and got the rapist judged and sentenced though some of the rapists are straight relatives.
“Community members regarded similar incidents as something not legal, they thought it could be easily solved through an agreement. This initiative, Child Protection Champions made them understand that this is a serious problem and that children’s future is at stake” defended Alda.
The initiative is carried out once a year and so far has awarded children members of Child Parliament for reporting to the authorities teachers who sexual abused their pupils, it awarded community leader for exemplary reporting his own brother-in-law, community police officer also for handcuffing is brother and a judge for exemplary conducting judging sessions in a child friendly environment space, causing no trauma to the victims.
On the other hand the Christian Commitment Coordinator, Vicente Mananze praised the initiative but said there is need to double efforts to minimize child protection incidents in the community among them work with pastors so that during the masses on Saturday and Sundays they make the dissemination of Children’s Rights as daily subjects and also promote debates over the role of each one of the community member in guaranteeing that their children are safe at home and in the community in general.
“Pastors in the community must continuously work with parents, so that they can double their efforts to protect their own children and teach their children to avoid playing with adult at all” said Mananze.
The Child protection manager says it will be difficult to eradicate totally child abuse in the country but a lot could be done to minimize. The reason why it is important to create a profile of a rapist in order to identify the incident before it happen, avoid leaving children alone with adult people even if they are straight relatives, advise children never to walk alone but always in groups is among the strategies to protect them.