AT A CROSSROADS: We must do everything that can be done to protect children

In the age of information that we live in, it’s hard sometimes not to be depressed as a result of reading or watching bad news from all over the world. Yet, it is important to keep in the know, because as they say information is power, so even when such information is depressing, being in the know can help the individual and society at large make informed decisions.

The other day I was reading a note penned by Ms Henrietta H. Fore, the Unicef executive director, titled “An open letter to the world’s children,” where she talks about 8 reasons why she is “worried, and hopeful, about the next generation.” She reflects on the three decades that have passed since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted.

The note stated that “15,000 children under 5 still die every day, mostly from treatable diseases and other preventable causes.”

In as much as many strides have been made in pediatrics, leading to reduced child mortality worldwide, over 5.3 million children’s death is still a huge number. The worst thing is that often, poverty, inequality, discrimination, and distance often are what cause the mortality, as the children fail to get essential preventive or curative medicine.

In as much as there is a reduced number of children missing out on primary school, still, there is a huge number of children in the world that is not able to access primary education.

Henrietta reminds us that our children face challenges, global shifts that our parents could never have imagined - climate change, technology, migration and so on. To me what does all this portend? We cannot bring up our children the way we were brought up.

Two of the eight issues Henrietta advances are that our children need “twenty-first-century skills for a twenty-first-century economy” and their “digital footprint must be protected”.

We need to ask ourselves: is what we are offering our children at home and schools enough to prepare them for a twenty-first-century economy? How practical is our education in economic empowerment?

Looking back, the education offered since independence, how much of it has collectively been used to fuel economic advancement? These are hard nuts to crack.

Looking at the failure of Africa to advance its economies- look at the number of industries that were started since independence and how many of them failed to progress. Look at our roads, and show me cars made from Africa! Look at the consumables that we have at home, and show me where they originate! We import so much that we should be making in Africa.

When we import things that can be made in our motherlands, we are simply denying jobs to our youths, and creating misery for our children.

Just imagine, we import matchboxes, paper bags, simplest cosmetics, plates, spoons, bicycles, etc. We import underwear, toys, chairs, and sometimes even fish! Here I am talking about very simple items, not huge machinery.

When we talk about our kids going to school, we must ask ourselves what are we preparing them to produce, if we almost import all consumables goods/ products?

In the issue of “digital footprint,” raised by Henrietta, it is very sad that Africans don’t even have any control over this. Our children use Google, Facebook and many other websites, where African government has little or no control over them. But even if your child has never used a computer, still s/he has a digital footprint. Sharing his/her pictures, birth registration etc., as all this is done, thieves online look for a child’s digital footprint and steal their identity…. It is the duty of the parents, as well as the government to ensure children’s digital footprints are safe.