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Making the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child a Reality
United Nations Children’s Fund Zimbabwe (UNICEF)
June 16, 2004

Wednesday 16^th June, This year to mark Day of the African Child, activities will focus around the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of Children. The Charter, adopted by the members of the African Union in July 1990, recognizes the importance of children in African society and enshrines their right to develop to their full potential in a nurturing environment such as a family, with love, happiness and understanding. The 48 articles convention clearly outlines a child’s right to survival, development, participation and protection and has been ratified by all member states.

The Charter was created to acknowledge the specific challenges that children in Africa face, which has since been further compounded by the AIDS pandemic which has left more than eleven million children across the continent orphaned.

"Today, as we seek to remember our commitments to African children, it is even more important that we recommit ourselves to the articles of the African Charter and do much more to ensure that every child in the continent has their rights fulfilled," said Dr. Festo P. Kavishe, UNICEF Representative. "To do this though, we must make them our number one priority and allow them to participate in many of the important decisions that determine their future."

To commemorate the Day, many activities are taking place around the country to promote the rights of African Children. The United Nation’s Children’s Fund, in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Youth Round Table, will be hosting a public discussion on the African Charter and also organizing a march in Harare on Saturday the 19^th June. In conjunction with Streets Ahead and the National Gallery, an art exhibition by children living on the streets will be at the National Gallery till the 30^th June.

The Day of the African Child pays tribute to the courage of thousands of black school children who took to the streets to protest the inferior quality of their education and to demand their right to be taught in their own language in Soweto, South Africa in 1976. Hundreds of boys and girls were shot down by the apartheid regime, and in the two weeks of protest that followed, more than a hundred people were killed and more than a thousand injured. To honour the memory of those killed and the courage of all those who marched, the Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16 June every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organization of African Unity.

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