Stakeholders urged to make child protection priority

Stakeholders of a multi-sectoral committee on child protection in the Central Region, have pledged to make child protection issues their topmost priority, and have called on right holders and duty bearers to do same.

The Committee, which met in Cape Coast on Thursday, December 11, has therefore resolved to formulate strategic policies on child protection and commit themselves to realize that dream.

The programme was organised by the Department of Children, and supported by PLAN Ghana, a child-centred non-governmental organization (NGO), and aimed at soliciting reports from members on how their departments were carrying out activities on child-related issues.

After the deliberations, it was clear that members lacked coordination and collaboration among themselves, judging from the individualistic presentation of their achievements and challenges they faced in their attempts to achieve their aim.

Mr. Jonathan Ribeiro, Chairman for the occasion, and the Regional Director for Community Development, therefore, called for broader stakeholder consultations and policies, to ensure better strategies on child protection issues of which members agreed.

Mr. Godwin Korli, representative for PLAN Ghana in charge of child protection, explained that children had four main fundamental human rights which must be respected to ensure their total well-being.

These include the right to survival, the right to protection, participation, and the right to development - the rights which together ensured the child-centred community development approach for every child to realize his or her full potentials.

He observed that since rights go with responsibilities, rights holders and duty bearers alike ought to identify their individual purposes towards unearthing the problems affecting children, and devise means to solve them for the growth, development and protection of the child.

Mr. Divine Opare, Regional Director, Department of Children, said the multi-sectoral committee on child protection, which sought to deal with issues and challenges facing children in the Central Region, was established 14 years ago.

Though it enjoyed the support of UNICEF on quarterly basis, Mr. Opare noted that, somewhere along the line, funding seized, which affected continuous meeting of the committee, and lauded PLAN Ghana for coming to the aid of the committee which had now become vibrant.

Stakeholders included the Ghana Health Service, the Department of Gender, the Regional House of Chiefs, the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly, the Department of Social Welfare, the Community Development and the Human Service Trust, a child-centred NGO.

The rest were the Ghana Immigration Service, the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU), the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Ghana Prisons Service, the Attorney General’s Department, the Regional Co-ordinator of Pre-Schools, the Media and the Moslem Community.