Giving life to the Nigerian child
The International Children’s Day is a day set aside for the promotion and welfare of children across the globe. Nigeria is not left out as many organisations and bodies celebrate the young in their own unique ways.
The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), in celebration of the 2017 Children’s Day, with the theme: ‘Child Protection and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Issues and Opportunities’, called for an end to violence against children and the adoption of the Child Rights Act in all states in Nigeria.
With Nigeria joining the rest of the world in adopting the National Child Rights Act in 2003 and domesticating the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, only 20 out of the 36 states have passed the Child Rights Act: including the FCT and Kano State, which also marked the 2017 Children’s Day with campaigns to end violence against children.
The most important right of a child is the right to survival and development. However, millions of Nigerian children still suffer some form of physical, emotional or sexual violence.
According to a 2014 survey by the National Population Commission, with support from UNICEF and the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, six out of every 10 Nigerian children experience at least one form of violence or the other before they reach 18.
Nigeria’s Children’s Day celebration is used as an opportunity to highlight the prevalence of some issues children go through, as well as measures needed to address them.
UNICEF representative in Nigeria, Mohamed Fall, said: “Each one of us is responsible for creating a world where children feel safe, protected and empowered to speak up for themselves.”
Among the issues that threaten a child’s survival is HIV/AIDS, which has become the leading cause of death in Africa. More than 95 per cent of HIV infections are in developing countries, two-thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 28 million people are living with the infection.
The National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), in commemorating the 2017 Children’s Day, set aside the day for the promotion and welfare of children. NACA challenged everyone to use the moment to think about children living with HIV and their families.
The Director General of NACA, Dr Sani Aliyu, in a press release to mark the day, said: “HIV/AIDS is a global health challenge of our lifetime but we remain committed to fighting this virus to the finish,” adding that research has led to innovation in preventing the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their children and an ever-widening scope of treatment options for children living with HIV and their families.
“Counselling and testing for HIV is crucial; especially among pregnant women, to protect the unborn child and ensure that in the very near future, a HIVfree generation is made possible.
“As we celebrate with our children, please join us and help us win the fight against HIV in children. No child should be born with HIV in Nigeria,” Dr. Sani Aliyu said.
He further stated that Nigeria still accounted for a significant proportion of children living with HIV globally and that this burden was fed by unrestrained motherto-child (vertical) transmission of HIV and a dysfunctional Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) system.