Publications

Our National Call for Action

This year Save the Children Swaziland contributed to an international report produced by the International Save the Children Alliance 'Children's rights: A Second Chance' which analysed whether progress has been made since the signing of the UNCRC, and also puts forward a framework for improvement. All Members of the Alliance were asked to contribute their own 'National Call for Action' which outlines the current situation for children and what needs to be done by all levels of responsibilty to improve matters.

Save the Children Swaziland - National Call for Action 2001

Background

Swaziland signed and ratified the Convention on the right of the child some years back. However, children are still faced with numerous problems in terms of access to basic services. The country also made promises ten years ago to improve lives of children in Swaziland. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is undermining all the achievements made over the years. Poverty, sexual exploitation and poor health indicators on child survival, and universal access to education remains a big challenge, we are very far from the promises made ten years ago. The increasing number of orphaned and vulnerable children is also posing a serious challenge to the country.

Universal Access to Basic Education

This was one of the key areas identified as a priority in the National Plan of Action. However, the position at the moment is far from the expected. Even though enrolment figures were improving over the years. We still do not have free basic education in the country and this has a negative impact, as high numbers of children cannot access primary education. Poverty, lack of employment and death of parents due to HIV/AIDS pandemic and other chronic illnesses has worsened the situation for children in the country.

Even though the Ministry of education has established the special education unit, a lot of disabled children remain excluded from the mainstream education with very little access to education particularly in the rural areas. This is compounded by the fact that very few teachers have had pre-service training on inclusive education. Discrimination of disabled children is even common within the family and community because of attitudes and beliefs associated with bad luck if you have a disabled child. Even for those who manage to go to school, most of them end up with primary education only. There is nothing in place to cater for needs of children with special challenges at tertiary level.

In consulting children themselves, they raised the issue of teacher / pupil ratio as quite high and felt that if for some reasons you can not cope in that situation you are left out completely. The children also cited the issue of school fees and uniform as a discriminatory practice which denies them opportunity or access to the education system. Parents have to pay school fees and buy uniforms from pre primary to high school. The children felt that the issue of school fees need to be regulated and controlled by government since they are very high and denies a lot of children of their basic right to education.

Adult literacy

Again children felt that access to this facility needs to be improved since those children that do not get a chance of being in a formal school setting, primarily due to the high cost of school fees do attend these classes. An increase in number of children enrolling in such arrangements is observed especially among orphaned and destitute children.

According to children, government should take an initiative of paying the adult literacy teachers instead of volunteering, which is less committal and, there should be structures in place especially in the rural areas instead of conducting the sessions under trees. However, our position is that children should be allowed to be children and go through the regular school system instead of an informal adult literacy scheme, which was designed for adults only.

Health

The consultation fee that is paid in health facilities is having a very negative impact on the lives of the very poor who cannot afford to pay for such services. Again it was the view of the children that government should do something about these fees so that health can be affordable to all citizens. Other observations raised are as follows:

The Government of Swaziland's target of having 8km radius health facilities within communities has not been reached thus infant and maternal mortality is still high.
In reduction of severe and moderate malnutrition, children felt more funds that should be directed at curbing such problems through development programmes.
Children also felt that the Health services are not child friendly

In reduction to maternal mortality, children had the following observations

More effort must be put in raising awareness on adolescence pregnancy
Disabled mothers should get special attention especially in cases where there is no transport to clinics
Provision of transport to clinics in rural areas is necessary in case of emergencies
Referrals system needs to be strengthened between clinics and hospitals.
Gender mainstreaming should be continuously emphasised so that men take equal responsibility especially when mothers are pregnant.

Access to safe water and sanitation; the following observations were made

Government should include communities from the initiation stage when implementing projects to ensure sustainability e.g. when setting up a safe water system.
Provision of clean water in rural areas should be continued in all areas since in some areas people still walk long distances to fetch water and in many cases the water is unclean.
Government needs to scale up improvement in sanitation since some areas still do not have toilets.

Protection of children in especially difficult circumstances; the following observations were made

As much as there is something done about perpetrators in sexual abuse cases children still feel the victim and relatives need some more protection after the perpetrator has served the sentence.
The country needs to develop the Child Act which it does not have at the moment
Employment of qualified disabled people should be reinforced
Structures should be accessible to the disabled that includes schools, health facilities and public places
There should be child friendly courts in place
Children should access fully fledged education whilst in juvenile reformatory institutions
Children should not be mixed with adults whilst in detention
Organisations that are trying to address issues of children in difficult circumstances be helped through government subvention to continue with the work

Against such background Save the Children is calling for:

Review and update of laws guiding against exploitation of children
Child protection guidelines and procedures be put in place and made operational
Effective policies on protection of children to be put in place and respected
Ensuring that all children have access to primary education as a starting point
Ensuring that mothers and children have access to affordable health care services
Ensuring that health services are user friendly to children and young people
Ensure participation of children and young people in all issues affecting their lives
Promotion and application of the principles of the UN Convention to all child-related policies and laws
Vigorous programmes addressing HIV/AIDS as it affects children
Acceleration of programmes enhancing access to basic services i.e. clean water