- The Vice President of the African Court Honourable Blaise Tchikaya
- Honourable Judges of the African Court,
- Invited guests, including the Human Rights Monitors from the Centre for Strategic Litigation led by a former Tanzania Human Rights Commission Chairman Honourable Tom Nyanduga
- Law students from the Tumaini University,
- The members of the Media fraternity
- Staff of the African Court,
- All Protocols observed,
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to deliver my opening statement during today’s commemoration of the Day of the African Child whose theme for this year is ‘’Eliminating Harmful Practices Affecting Children’’ and which is marked on the continent and globally.
The June 16 annual event, and designated by the African Union in 1991 as the Day of the African Child , honours the memories of those hundreds brave students who were brutally massacred in Soweto, South Africa, in 1976 for protesting against education injustice in the apartheid regime.
You will shortly hear a vivid living testimony from one of the Judges of the African Court Honourable Justice Dumisa Ntsebeza from South Africa of what struck on that horrific day of 16 June 1976. It happened some 46 years ago, but sadly to note we still a long way to go in ensuring that children are protected and given the opportunities in a just and fair manner.
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The commemoration of this day reminds us of the critical importance to respect rights of children and eliminating harmful social and cultural practices affecting children through collective responsibility.
I therefore exhort parents, governments, religious leaders and institutions, politicians, legislators and individuals, among others, to double efforts to mitigate all forms of harmful practices against children by adopting prudent African and realistic legislations , policies and bye-laws to tame crude and unjustified violations against children.
Just to mention a few of these violations and harmful practices , among others, include uneasy and unfair access to education, child labour, early marriages, Female Genital Mutilation, child trafficking, drugs-related crimes, sexual abuse, child soldiers and child mortality. We must fight them regionally, globally and internationally.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
I conclude my remarks by sincerely appealing to governments, NGOs, international organisations and other stakeholders to gather to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the full realization of the rights of children of Africa.
The children are the rock of our future and inevitably we cannot ignore it.
Thank you.
