The recent enactment of the Child Care, Protection and Justice Act, has provided ample space for stakeholders to fulfill their mandate in Child Care, Protection and access to Justice for Children. The law has improved the country’s systems and legal mechanism on the protection and rights of children. This law prevents and addresses issues of child abuse, abduction, trafficking, and harmful cultural practices. This is accomplished by putting together all the issues of child protection, care and justice that were in various laws and policies into one law. The law further recognizes that the primary duty of childcare rests with the parents or guardians. The provisions in this act underscored the duty of stakeholders in child protection and parents by specifically providing that parents provide care, guidance, maintenance and protection from abuse and neglect of children. It cannot be assumed that just because someone is a professional or a parent, is able to respond to a child safety and protection needs and that they have the skills or the confidence to do so as expected by the law.
Early marriages have serious consequences for the health and emotional well-being of children generally, and the girl child in particular. The consequences may be physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional in nature. They may include illiteracy, disruption of education, loss of freedom and autonomy, poverty and reproductive health problems. Apart from undermining the self-confidence and self-identity of girls, child marriages also make girls prone to physical and emotional abuse. In fact, as UNICEF suggests child brides are “likely to lead to a life of domestic and sexual subservience over which they have no control.”
Download the paper to read more
Eye of the Child Board of Trustees have been challenged to appoint a young and promising Miss. Wathu Ntandika whose personal vision will transform the organization investments and business department for sustainable financing of the organization charity services.
Miss. Wathu Ntandika is well experienced social workers and advocate for Children and Women rights in Malawi with a Bachelor of Business Administration Marketing Degree obtained from the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS).
For more information, please contact the Head of Administration through email:
Human traffickers in Malawi often prey on children and women with low education and social economic status with many originating from broken or violent homes.
Traffickers exert extremely brutal and manipulative control over their victims, from both a physical and a psychological perspective.
These women who are trafficked suffer from the typical circumstances of sexual violence, and the deliberately malicious “treatment” inflicted on them by the traffickers contribute to intensifying the severity of the impact of the experience.
The Eye of the Child operates in a Country where a large number of children are subject to sexual exploitation, trafficking, abuse, hunger, malnutrition, harmful cultural practices. A country faced with a number of calamities among them included; the floods that almost displaced thousands of families across the nation, shortage of rainfall that led to many families not to harvest enough and the economic downturn.
Eye of the Child launch Campaign Against Child Sexual abuse In Malawi, cases of sexual abuse of children is on the rise, as seen in the alarming numbers of defilement, trafficked and forced prostitution of children and various forms of harmful cultural practices they endure and these continue to be reported in the media every day.
With Sitabene Malange-Majamanda
Eye of the Child 1997 – 2003
Director of Programmes
There are stories of passion that are told every day. Every person has a kind of thing they do so passionately that even in the face of insurmountable opposition, one clings on to that which they so much love. When you listen to Sitabene Malange-Majamanda, and the drive she poses about the welfare of children in Malawi, not even a mountain would move her to think to the contrary. She demonstrates a rare passion for children and the youth. She gave her life, her money and her time into youth activities expecting no monetary return. She was driven by the power to make a difference to the life of the under-privileged, the marginalized, and the impoverished youth.
Children have the right to take part in decisions that affect their lives, but all too often by their involvement is limited or non- existence. During the year under review, the department organized a series of education forums to promote child participation in protection. The activities took a team of professionals to Primary and Secondary Schools throughout the Country.
Child participation being one of the core principles on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which children and young people freely express their views and to facilitate their views and there is an obligation to listen to children’s views and to facilitate their participation in all matters affecting them within the family, schools, local communities, public services, institutions, government policy, and the judicial procedures.
“My parents would have punished me had they known I was travelling to Ntcheu on public transport, often in a crammed minibus. That I once survived on cererac (infant cereal food) for one week living in a shack. At that time we had received funding that required us to conduct mapping to build primary schools in Ntcheu. Today over 68 full primary schools have been constructed in Ntcheu because of that sacrifice about 20 years ago,” Sitaben Malange recollected.