STATEMENT BY THE RT HON PRIME MINISTER
DR B. SIBUSISO DLAMINI
Read by Acting Prime Minister Senator Paul Dlamini
AT UNICEF’S 70TH ANNIVERSARY EVENT
AT ROYAL SWAZI SPA CONVENTION CENTRE
THURSDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2016
Honourable Minister
UNICEF Regional Director of Eastern and Southern Africa,
Ms Leila Pakkala
UNICEF Representative in Swaziland, Ms Rachel Odede
Civil Society Representative
Child Representative
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is my honour, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, to greet you all today and congratulate UNICEF on this, its 70th anniversary. I extend a very warm welcome to Ms Leila Pakkala, the UNICEF Regional Director, to both this event and, indeed, to the Kingdom of Swaziland. I regret that, owing to being away on official duties, I am unable to be with you in person. However, Acting Prime Minister, Senator Paul Dlamini, has kindly agreed to read my statement to you.
It is a great privilege for us to have Ms Pakkala with us for this commemoration ceremony and I am sorry to miss the opportunity to meet her personally. I see that Ms Pakkala has a very busy schedule while in Swaziland and I trust that all stakeholders will take full advantage of her very substantial professional experience.
UNICEF was, of course, born at the same time as the United Nations itself. Establishing that institution saw the countries of the world formalizing the unity that had been pledged at the end of the Second World War. And there is perhaps no better way of reflecting on the impact of UNICEF over the years than by asking the question – where would we have been without it? All of us here today are, or were, children at one time or another, and a careful examination of UNICEF’s might well see us all having benefitted from its good works.
For progress to be claimed there has to be robust measurement. In the case of UNICEF’s work in Swaziland the facts and figures are there for all to see. I can start by making reference to the UNICEF support for the roll-out of free public primary education, when it helped our Ministry of Education and Training to abolish school fees in grades one and two across the country. That gave rise to an enrolment increase in both grades. Overall public primary enrolment rates now stand at 96%.
The proper care and protection of the children of our Nation covers a very wide spectrum. The National Children’s Coordination Unit, which was a project funded by UNICEF, proceeded to take the essential first step of setting standards for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). Then, with technical assistance from UNICEF, our Deputy Prime Minister’s Office was able to create its own Child Services Department with the broad remit of care for all children in our society. More specifically, the primary task of that new Department is to ensure that the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child are implemented and sustained in our country.
Creating that Department is an important step. It is essential to have the institutional framework for achieving the objectives of these worthy international agreements. But these would have remained merely paper commitments if there had been no implementation and monitoring framework. And even with that framework in place there needed to the enabling legislation which now exists in the form of the Children’s Protection and Welfare Act of 2012. The Child Services Department, to which I referred earlier, is now drawing up the regulations for the practical application of that Act.
Very shortly all will, therefore, be in place. Then for change on the ground. Because we do have a problem with gender-based violence and this includes violence against children. It really is hard to comprehend how an adult can be systematically violent to a child. But it exists, and eliminating violence against children from our society demands a paradigm shift in three key areas involving our children – physical violence in the home, corporal punishment in the school and sexual violence generally. And these paradigm shifts need to take place in the mind as well as the statute.
Progress starts with creating a society-wide ethos that has respect for women and children in a sustained manner, and accepts the position that punishment by means of physical violence is both cruel and counter-productive. By way of example allow me to mention that corporal punishment of students at school is not practiced in any European country and in most it is illegal. Many countries also will take action, through social services, where unreasonable violence against children is used in the home. Empirical evidence in those countries does not support the idealogy of spare the rod, spoil the child. That is the first mental hurdle for our own society to deal with.
Furthermore, a sustained respect for women and children lies at the root of eliminating sexual violence. The global Violence against Children Study in 2007 revealed that one in four of Swazi children were exposed to physical violence as a child, and three in 10 experienced emotional abuse. And as many as one in three females in Swaziland experienced sexual violence as a child. These are shaming statistics. With regard to sexual violence, apart from it being a serious criminal offence, it suggests that some men consider children as inferior beings and entirely available for sexual abuse. That is totally wrong and, I should add, entirely in contradiction of Christian values. An offender may operate under the radar of law enforcement, but God is watching.
Resolving those issues and achieving the change in attitude to violence against children by men - and, in some cases, by women as well - demands more than a little action. It requires a combination of education, motivation, public statement, and an appropriate and visible degree of severity of punishment. It also needs all members of society to accept that failing to report serious abuse of children, in whatever form, is tantamount to collusion with the perpetrator.
Government is taking the matter very seriously, and our concern caused us, with UNICEF support, to commission the National Study on the Drivers of Violence affecting Children in Swaziland. We understand the draft Report is ready for Cabinet review and I can give the assurance that its contents will be given very serious and careful consideration.
In 2012, Swaziland moved from position 43 to 9 in Africa in the child-friendly index, because of the creation of our policy and legislative framework, and our ratifying the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. That is commendable but it effectively diverted attention to the ongoing violence against children that continues to happen. Now that we have the institutional framework and, soon, the necessary regulations, imagine what placing we can achieve with a vigorous and assertive campaign to eliminate violence against children. We should now aim for number one position in Africa and what an achievement that would be to carry proudly with us wherever we might go! But it will not happen on auto-pilot. There must be pro-active commitment to action and accountability.
An important part of that action programme should be the scaling up of the One Stop Centre that, again with UNICEF support, we have established in Mbabane. We cannot eliminate violence against children overnight and, in the meantime, there needs to be sufficient coverage of health, protection and counselling services for children in distress.
I conclude by saying, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, how grateful we have been for the support given to our country by UNICEF over the past 48 years and give our best wishes for a future of continuing UNICEF assistance to the children of Swaziland.
Thank you.