Govt launches 5-year strategic plan to protect children rights

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AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE government has launched the second five-year strategic plan aimed to strengthen child rights provision and the fight against children violence in the country.

Speaking during the launching event on Tuesday here,   Constitutional affairs and Justice minister  Mwigulu Nchemba said that the 2020-2025 strategy contains several priorities meant to ensure that every child in the country remains safe from any kind of abuse.

He directed the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Prof Sifuni Mchome to facilitate translation of the strategy into Kiswahili for the message to reach more people.

“We have completed the implementation of the National Plan of Action to end Violence against Children which was implemented from 2012 to 2017. So the launch of this strategy goes further to complement efforts done in the previous plan,” he said.

The minister said gender based violence including violence against children remains one of the most serious human rights violations which call for determined efforts to curb it.

“Putting the strategy in a simple Kiswahili language will enable more people to understand the importance of protecting their children while also promoting children rights. This will also strengthen child rights provision systems as well as policies and laws,” he said.

Mwigulu wanted all the ministries and institutions implementing the strategy to ensure that they issue implementation reports in a certain timeframe so as to identify more challenges facing children in the country.

Prof Mchome said that the second strategy has highlighted several improvements which will support child rights protection and fight against child violence.

“In the implementation of the first strategy, the government increased children courts to 130 and capacitated 638 legal officials with so as to enable them handle the children violence cases in a smooth way which will not affect children confidence and rights,” he said.

Prof Mchome said a total of 63,023 violence cases have been listened and provided justice to thousands of children whom majority of them were from vulnerable families.

Country representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Shalini Baragua commended the government for coming up with a strategy which is meant to ensure more safeness of Tanzanian children.

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