By Mustapha Sesay
A research conducted by the Centre for Coordination of Youth Activities (CCYA), Search for Common Ground (SFCG) and Society for Learning and Yearning for Equal Opportunities (SLYEO) has ranked Pujehun District as the worst in terms of child exploitation.
The research titled: ‘Engaging Children and Youth as Partners in Preventing Violence Against Children,’ was funded by the European Union. According to the project implementers, it was youth and children led but adult supported. It details six broad categories of violence, which comprise Violence at home; Teenage Pregnancy and early marriage; Violence against women and girls; Child exploitation; Violence at school and universities; Social exclusion and youth unemployment.
The project is implemented regionally in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. It has an overall objective to ensure that all kinds of violence were eradicated against children and youths, and the capacities of children and youths built to prevent violence against their peers.
“Through this project the worst forms of violence against children are identified, their impacts understood and means of addressing them recognized; specific recommendations from youths and children will be integrated into programming and policy actions and findings mainstreamed at lower levels that will make communities resilient in preventing violence against children,” the report reads in part. It adds: “Violence at home was the most frequent form of violence mentioned by children. Beating and harsh punishments are very common at home and also at school in Sierra Leone. Children who don’t live with their parents are highly vulnerable to violence, particularly to domestic violence and child exploitation.”
The report also pointed out that 661 individual conversations were conducted with children and youths of both sex, throughout the country.
Salaymatu Kaloko, one of the children who were captured in the research, said as children they were faced with many challenges both at home and in learning institutions. She noted that in most cases they were used as laborers and sometimes forced into sexual relationship with dire consequences to face as children.
“Sometime teachers will ask us to launder their cloths at home or fetch fire wood for them, or they will approach you with love proposal. If you refuse the next thing you will face is to fail their exams,” she lamented, adding: “in the process if you get pregnant we are forced to drop out of school.”
In the face of these challenges as highlighted by Salamatu in her testimony, recommendations of the report highlighted that child protection mechanisms should be created at community level and the [police] Family Support Unit and Child Welfare should be enforced through training to put members of the unit in a better footing to recognize all forms of violence against children.
The report also recommends the formation of youth parliament to be supervised by the National Youth Commission which handles youth-related issues in the country. Such a parliament, it notes, should be comprised of youth representatives from all the districts in the country.
Anthony Koroma, Commissioner of National Youth Commission (NYC), responding to both the findings and recommendations of the report at two days ‘National Curriculum Summit’ held at Kona Lodge Hotel in Freetown, said the findings of the research were critical but not entirely new as similar points had been highlighted by other organizations.
The NYC Commissioner noted that there were already structures in place to address the recommendations but that there was a need to support those structures in order to function effectively. He added that the recommendations also emphasized on activities that they were already undertaking aimed at reducing youth violence and other related youth issues.
Abigail Yavana Stevens, Programme Officer at CCYA and one of the young researchers, explained that 25 young persons were giving the space to talk and listen to their colleagues across the country during the cause of the research. She said the involvement of young people contributed to the level of confidence respondents had in the process because “it was youths talking to youths and children talking to children.”
She pointed out that they discovered in Pujehun that a good number of children were involved in child labor with an unnamed multi-national company. These children, she revealed, were working for long hours for minimal wage and that they were mainly involved in the trade because their parents could not afford to take care of them.
(C) Politico 31/05/16
