Protecting children rights is an ongoing struggle

However, achieving that goal, with lasting results, proves time and again to be much easier said than done.

In 1991 Tanzania signed UNICEF’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which outlines the basic rights that all children should have, without exception. Unfortunately, even after that agreement was made, legal protection for children in Tanzania remained scattered throughout various unenforced statutes and outdated laws.

Then, in November 2009, the Tanzania’s Parliament passed the Law of the Child Act 2009. This was a significant step towards protecting children’s rights. The law addresses many issues that Tanzanian children face, and aims to protect them from discrimination, ill treatment and neglect.

To assist most vulnerable children, the government implemented a plan to create most vulnerable children’s committees (MVCC) in every village to care for these kids. The committees follow the same basic organizational model that Africa bridge helps form in the villages.

Due to lack of funds and resources, the government has found that there is more need than there is resources, and many villages haven’t been reached.A long road lies ahead to help children gain the protections that they are rightfully owed, but it’s always inspiring to see progress being made.

It is in the same vein that the EAC Child Policy (2016) was launched last week during the 2nd EAC Child Rights Conference at the Desmond Tutu Conference Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

The EAC Child Policy provides a functional regional framework to facilitate the development, coordination and strengthening of partner states towards the realization of children's rights and well being.

The document sets out priority areas that include strengthening national child protection systems and community mechanisms within the EAC region; and developing an integrated approach to providing quality education, health and social protection to children, among others.

It is our duty to ensure a bright future for today's children as they are the pillars of the EAC. Investment in children is an EAC Treaty mandate which calls for partner states to closely cooperate in the field of social welfare and to develop a common approach towards disadvantaged and marginalized groups including children, the youth, the elderly, and persons with disabilities".

The first EAC Child Conference was held in Bujumbura, Burundi in 2012. Since the Bujumbura conference, the EAC Secretariat spearheaded the development of the EAC Child Policy, which was adopted by the 3rd meeting of the Sectoral Council on Gender, Youth, Children, Social Protection and Community Development in March, 2016.

In the same way, child poverty among other globally pertinent issues such as child labour, trafficking, and lack of education, is not a choice. It is an undesirable outcome that has been decided for, or rather, against, these children.

When these boys and girls are approached with such appalling conditions starting from the most infantile stages of life, only they realize the hardship of what they perceive as predestination.

However, over the years, numerous organizations and charities have effectively refuted this misconception, claiming it to be a figment in the hopeless minds of the unfortunate as they continue to prove that these circumstances are reversible through humanitarian means.

Although much of the ongoing crisis with child rights is still situated in the many regions of the world, including third-world nations lacking sufficient resources and opportunities, there is evidence of improvement.

With the rise in global activism and leading programmes such as UNICEF, members have successfully eliminated such horrid conditions in various cities and slums, but the problem still persists in large numbers.