Hello Ann:

And thank you for leading this event on Social Edge.

As you know, the world is not neatly partitioned into different disciplines the way that our thinking tends to see it - and you give a very vivid example of this in your UN Chronicle article, when you say:

QUOTE: Girls’ education has been posited as a “vaccine” against HIV/AIDS, with comparative analysis of data from Zambia, for example, of non-educated and educated women showing a substantial difference in infection rates. :UNQUOTE

It concerns me that popular responses to AIDS and female education (I mean, degrees of compassionate response) may differ when we are unable to see the link between them, in ways that might make (e.g.) fundraising a great deal more difficult than it might be if we viewed the world around us in a more holistic and interwoven way. So part of the gift you bring us, it seems to me, is a clarity about the way in which the education of girls and young women transforms far more than educational statistics, far more even than the individual lives it touches - reaching out into some of the world's most difficult territory as a catalyst for all sorts of change.

Some of the countries where you work have numbers of child soldiers, and I understand that globally, about 40% of these are girls. The trades in blood diamonds, drugs, and persons, the afflictions of disease, drought, famine, tribal and religious conflicts, ethnic cleansing and warfare... It sometimes seems to me that the complexities of the African context might easily defy our best efforts at social and societal improvement - and yet people like yourself show us how in a thousand small ways, from the gathering and telling of "grandmother stories" to micro-finance, from bake sales to schools and your alumni - CAMA, how proud you must be of them - person by person, care and diligence and love and knowledge can triumph under adverse circumstances.

You ask:

QUOTE: How then can organizations working for and with children call on the consciences of the world to put children at the center of all our concern? :UNQUOTE

I think the answer lies in stories - for just as the stories of the grandmothers Lisa Grainger collected (as you recount under the title "Reviving African tales, a writer helps educate girls" on your website) touch the hearts of those who read them, so do your own stories of the lives you meet with and the places you do your work.

We need your stories to touch our hearts

by no means forgetting that we also need your careful and considered policies in the field, to protect those around whose lives those stories revolve.

Hi Ann,

Thank you for hosting this topic. I just completed my role as Capacity Development Manager for a PEPFAR-funded OVC programme. The role was for one year, in order to support CD in the programme. One critical area was Child Protection. I had the responsibility of supporting the development of CP policies within our partner organisations (14 in number). It was a useful exercise which was made easier because my organisation has a good CP policy. I also got a lot of resources on the internet. At the moment, our programme officers are working with the organisations to develop CP policies.

My experience with local organisations in Nigeria is that socio-cultural and religious issues stand in the way of child protection. The Nigerian government passed the Child Rights Acts but many state governments are reluctant to do so. Many of our partner organisations and indeed many in our country assent to CP only so they can get grants but I believe we are raising awareness on the issue which is the critical thing to do now.

I will share our experience with the discussants in due course.

Charles - Thank you so much for responding and for your insightful comments. Regarding your thoughts as to how we can call on the conscience of the world about the issue of child protection, you are so right about the power of stories to build understanding. Yet if we think about child protection, this poses a significant challenge. Asking a child to tell his or her story of abuse can really exacerbate the pain. Indeed, children often have no language to tell their stories of abuse; they are traumatised, and silent in their trauma. How can we be sensitive to what children are telling us through their behaviour? We are sure that there are many people who have a lot to share on strategies in this area.

And Kabura – Thank you for responding, and for showing through your comments the complexity in the challenge to protect children. You write of socio cultural and religious issues, and how they can hamper progress. At the international and national levels the statements and policies do indeed exist, but how are they translated in the lives of children? Sometimes laws on Child Protection are perceived as undermining individual rights, such as the privacy of the family or institution; it brings home just how vulnerable children are when even the authorities lack the courage to challenge the status quo. We look forward to hearing more from you on this.

With apologies for late response (time seems to be premium here!), this is a follow-up to my earlier contribution. I give you a few instances to show the huddles that must be crossed in a country like Nigeria if the child is to be protected.

The Child Rights Act was passed by the Nigeria parliament a few years ago and it domesticates the international Convention on the Rights of the Child. Many state-level parliaments are adopting the act but some states, especially in the Muslim North, see some of the provisions as anti-religious, e.g. increasing the marriage age to 18 (many girl children are married off from age 12). Many clerics have seen the Act as a Western agenda. However, community-level initiatives in our work and that of Save the Children have shown that if sufficiently sensitised and mobilised, even deeply religious communities agree that the children in their midst need to be protected. The key issue here is proper sensitisation and education.

Similarly, many children, especially male children, are sent to religious schools where a cleric takes them through years of religious education. In many instances, the children leave their parents and stay with the religious instructors usually in austere circumstances. The ages of such children range from 4 - 10 or more. They are expected to fend for themselves by begging on the streets and from homes. There are also cases of abuse, including sexual molestations. There is a need therefore to evolve better ways to providing religious education to children. The system needs to be regulated and supported. There are many cases now where children receive koranic education in the evenings after a day of 'western' schooling. Such children return to their homes at the end of the day. Wealthy persons in the community can also contribute to the upkeep of such kids. (It is interesting that the children of well-to-do families do not engage in this system. At most, they receive religious schooling in the comforts of their homes as an add-on to the so-called Western education).

Poverty forces many families to push their children to the streets to hawk goods. There are cases where this is purely an exploitation of the children but there are many families who depend on the meagre resources brought in through street hawking by young children. The state has a huge role to play if poverty is to be eliminated.

These are mainly at the micro level. There are huge challenges at the macro level where systems are largely absent. There are also issues with local NGOs, where child protection issues are not a priority. Those who are supported by international partners such as Save the Children are more inclined to do something about protecting the child.

I could go on and on. Where I am from, child protection is a complex issue that requires carefully planning, programming and implementation. Fortunately, my society has a history of communal care and if properly managed, we can still reap from the culture of caring for all in the society. There is then a need for an indigenous (homegrown) solution with inputs of what has worked in other places.

Hello Ann, Charles and others I so appreciate the ground breaking work that Ann and CAMFED do in places I have been involved with in Africa and it is great to see their standards being recognized and adopted now by the UN. Some miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order: - I see no short-cuts to learning to deal with all aspects child abuse wherever it occurs in the world. We all need to wake up together and it takes time and patience and mutual support and education. - At the face-to-face level, it seems to me the degree to which people will be awake, empathetic and sensitive to the need for child protection can depend signifcantly on the extent to which they have recognized and worked on any personal child abuse issues - I strongly agree that field staff immersed in local culture and language can be adepts, and yet I've also seen local staff who themselves are needy (and, out of that need, greedy) and insensitive to issues of privacy etc - I've known public and private situations where having a good tale to tell and be associated with, of hardships suffered by children that are being fundraised for, completely ignores rights of privacy etc. These stories can be worn almost as a badge of personal honor by intermediaries, especially when speaking to western audiences who, eager to be informed, can unintentionally feed a halo effect. It makes me really uncomfortable when I encounter it - which can be valuable since it reminds me to check my own behavior! But I'm also conflicted about naming such discomfort in the dynamic of the moment, in terms of is it useful or not. Doing so without putting down the good intentions of others, coming across as holier than thou and perpetrating unnecessary pain seems to be a high art form that I for one haven't yet mastered. I wonder what do others do in this situation? - publicizing the need and value for all organizations and individuals in the field to have a conscious child protection policy is a really important educational activity. Networks like this do a great deal to spread the word and internet blogs etc offers a useful arena for sowing seeds of child protection education. I've consulted with some well known organizations where there is still no spelled out child protection policy and where well meaning staff have committed some astonishing breaches of privacy, generally though through ignorance rather than mal-intent - asking for child protection policy information as part of the organization's biography could be required by all those many intermediate directories and internet agencies which exist to register and publicize charities and even sometimes funnel funds directly from donors - One place where wider education about child protection policy could be clearly spelled out is in the information packs that many organizations now offer to the public for how to hold fundraising events - it isn't just a matter of strengthening the position of the child in relation to agents - IMO status as clients needs to be considered the right of ALL beneficiaries, both adult and child and too often it still is not. One strategy for strengthening the position of all as clients could be to identify and bring in senior managers to agencies who are already speaking a heart as well as heafull and customer/client service centered language, and who actively stand for this becoming a part of the organization's strategy and delivery - I really like the approach taken to volunteer service by organizations like SPW who are working to strengthen volunteering by indigenous students and other young people already living in the country of service (this loops back to Ann's comments re local field staff, and such young people also can be highly tuned into the wavelength, behaviors and silences of children in their home country) - ensuring that child representation is not just for but by children themselves and is really listened to and respected on networks and committees that address children's issues is such a fundamental building block of good field projects.

Child protection IS a hugely complex subject, as others here acknowledge, and yet at root it is also a simple subject - it's about opening our hearts, listening and remembering how we ourselves want to be done by - or wish we had been done by when we ourselves were children...

and this may be slightly off the point, but when I consult with many aid and development agencies, I'm struck by the fact that so many of us come to this work because we ourselves were wounded children and want to make a better world for today's children. And, in our zeal to make the world right, we can sometimes forget to take care of and protect the rights of our own and our colleagues' inner children... Thanks for listening and good luck to all!

Midi Berry, international development consultant, California

Hi Ann,

I just wanted to thank you for distributing the child protection policy. I am in the process of setting up an agricultural business in Zambia. We are currently working on a business plan and will be developing company policies in the coming months. When we develop those policies we will try to integrate some of the lessons from the child protection policy. Thanks.

Caroline Kosmas Saskatoon, Canada

I just read your article in the UN chronicle, more power to you.

Dear Ann - A big thank you goes to you and the CAMFED team for pushing the CAMFED Child Protection Policy through to the public. These policies are so vital in assisting to provide girl-children the rights to fair and deserved safety from sex-abuse in educational environments. We hope deeply that the ideas put forward by CAMFED are used as a template for public and private schools throughout all regions of Africa. We would also like to share that a very detailed article, written by our correspondent in Lusaka, outlining the June 30, 2008 court victory in the teacher-student abuse case in Zambia will be appearing on Women News Network - WNN in the next few days. We believe strongly that greater public exposure of these problems within the school system (in Zambia), and among the public in general, is of utmost importance in helping to protect all children from harm from any sexual predator. Thank you for doing the work you do. - Lys Anzia, founder/director Women News Network - WNN