Violence Against Children Can Be Tackled Through Media – UNICEF

 

Anything that doesn’t allow a child to grow physically, emotionally, psychologically is violence against children. Nowadays, this trend has become a norm in the country, the Child Protection Specialist with United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, Ms. Sharon Oladiyi, spoke to Funmi Olasupo on how this ugly development could be reversed.

Excerpts;
IN ending Violence Against Children, VAC, what have UNICEF done or is doing, in handling the situation?
UNICEF have been supporting the country and particularly UNICEF works with government, civil society organisations, traditional and religious institutions, we work with children themselves, we work within the school systems, we work to ensure water and sanitation all across the country and basically the strategies that we used is on building capacity of care givers, government officials, civil societies, organisations building capacity of those who can deliver services to protect children particularly to prevent violence, abuse and exploitation of children.

Child Labour

UNICEF also supports creating a friendly environment, creating a conducive environment for children to grow particularly ensuring there a legal frameworks or legislation that protects children and we also work with government to make sure that the laws that are passed are also implemented.

Vulnerablechildren
We also build capacity to ensure to bring in system strengthening in all these areas to protect children and to help children to fulfil their potentials and particularly focused on vulnerable children because most of the time they are defenceless.
We have also been able to work on service delivery particularly in the area of health; vaccine, ensure routine immunisation for children and support the school system, the teacher training so it is a whole lot of work that UNICEF has been able to do to help in the country.
As a child protection specialist, what effort have you put in to stop or reduce the menace to a bearest minimum?
Working for children, helping children I think is a lifetime affair. As long as we are on earth, as long as children are born every day, as long as we have children amongst us I don’t think the work can finish. We move from one generation to another and why we focus on children is also that we used to say children are our future. No, is not tomorrow, they are our future today and the way we build them the way we support, the way we raise children, the way we deal with our children today have a lot to do with our tomorrow.
A child that is properly raised that is healthy, that goes to school, that is well cared for, that is well provided for, that finished schooling, goes to the society, contributes to the society and helps the society to grow. It is also the opposite, a child that is born and not cared for, that doesn’t have education, that doesn’t grow up properly becomes a delinquent, becomes a vagabond can’t do anything for themselves, becomes and armed robber and so on.
So it is important that we raise our children well, we care for our children, we were all children once and some of the things we experienced during our childhood runs through our life affecting our present and creating all manners of things. Look at the family, children from dysfunctional family shows; when you look at children that are from dysfunctional families, they also have dysfunctional behaviours so the way we treat our children is intergenerational what you sow in your child is what they grow up with whether is  good or bad.
So we need to learn and we need to know, In fact some children what happens to them at age 3 remains with them their lifetime some at age 5 so we can’t say this person is a child and he/she doesn’t know; it is not true. So we need to be jealous of our children and we need to see children as our children and whatever is happening to my neighbour’s child I should care about it because that neighbour’s child can be the vagabond tomorrow that will attack my own child if I am jealous over my child.
How can you describe violence against children?
Violence against children is anything and everything we do to harm or hurt a child and we know them. we know when we hurt a child, we know when we get angry and abuse them.
Violence againstchildren
We know when we don’t care for them, we know when we neglect them, we know when we violate them-  all these are violence against children. Anything that doesn’t allow the child to grow physically, mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically anything that affects a child to grow properly in all these areas is violence against children and we need to stop doing such.
When you call your child names, when you compare your child with another, when you neglect your child, when men violate girls and when boys too are violated. When you hit a child in anger to harm the child, when we make marks on our children’s body because they annoy us, when we slap, when we bully, when we beat to the extent of living marks on their body this is violence against children.
Children could be sometimes be annoying, how then do you advise parents, teachers and guardians discipline them?
Let us discipline our children in love, let’s show more love not only to the children even in living, let’s care for one another, let’s stop evil amongst us in our homes, community, in our schools with that maybe we can reduce and eventually stop violence. Let us all wake up to our responsibilities.
Where do you think media can come in, in the fight against VAC?
The way the media talked about HIV and AIDS and everybody knows something about it, is the same way media can take it up to keep on speaking against violence until we can deal with it. The media so much helped to extent that in those days if you have HIV/AIDS you cannot come out but today because of what the media have said to help, people make informed decisions so people can come out and say am this am that, I’m a survivor and all that.