A nation should not be judged by how it treats its powerful citizens, but its weakest — and Zambia treats its helpless, vulnerable children like stray dogs, rummaging through garbage dumps.

Plight of the children

In Zambia today hundreds of thousands of children have to beg or are homeless; they have to scrounge for a living in the streets; they have no parents or support of any kind. Look at the numbers of sick children who don't receive any medical attention and the numbers of children who are illiterate.

Think of child prostitution. We share Zambia Episcopal Conference general secretary Fr. Ignatius Mwebe's concerns that services offered by the state are very inadequate to meet needs of children and families. We agree with Fr. Mwebe that this inadequate allocation of resources to children and our people in general is as a result of lack of political will.

We say this because most of the reforms have concentrated on administrative changes but very little has been translated into improved service delivery. There's need to improve capacity of institutions that are supposed to assist children.

The state should strive to ensure that children are brought up in a family environment. Vulnerable families are prone to emotional instability, irresponsibility, separations and divorce. This is not a priest speaking from a pulpit.

We are not and cannot be against the right to divorce, but as responsible and sensitive citizens, we wish that there were more stability in the family, so the less divorce the better. It is because stability really helps the children who are the ones most affected.

As Fr. Mwebe correctly observes, the family is very important in the development of any human being — it is a primary agent of socialisation.

Where the family is unable to provide for the child, it should be assisted by the state to do so. In cases where children do not have families the state should find alternative models of care. After all, children are not only born in a family, they are born in a community, in a nation — and their upbringing should be a collective responsibility of society.

And this is a fact that is even recognised in most of our African traditions or cultures. Our government doesn't have enough resources to give all our people a good standard of life, but it can — in some way — improve welfare assistance to families that are failing to provide for children.

Our children, our people, are our most important natural resource, and we must do everything possible to prepare them for the future. The future of Zambia lies in our children and it will be the one we are capable of creating for them.

One of our main tasks is and will always be that of developing the new generations, of giving our young people ever more attention not only for them to survive and grow but so as to also instil in them a solid consciousness, a profound sense of duty to their country and humanity. There's need to prepare our young people for the world of the future, which won't be an easy world to live in.

It is completely inconsistent on our government's part to on the one hand call on the young generations to face up to severe difficulties and complex problems created by its economic policies and on the other hand to stand idly by in the face of problems of the kind our young people are facing today.

The responsibility of bringing up and educating children in a nation like ours where over 80 per cent of the population lives in extreme poverty cannot be left to the family alone. It has to be a collective responsibility of the nation.

The issue of street children and orphans should not be left to the market forces, it needs to be addressed by the political and civic authorities of our country.

There's need for the government to address the plight of our vulnerable children. In a country like ours where poverty is so high, even without AIDS, there is still vulnerability of children.

What democracy, human rights or indeed Christianity can Zambians really talk about when close to a million children have to beg or are homeless and scrounge for a living in the streets, swallowing fire or doing other spectacular things to make a living?

What democracy, human rights or indeed Christianity can Zambians really talk about when one looks at the numbers of sick children who don't receive any medical attention and the numbers of children who are illiterate? Think of child prostitution which is becoming generalised in our country!

We are talking about things that, in our opinion, constitute true humanitarianism, the policy of promoting the dignity of human beings and their well-being.

30 May 2003

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