UNICEF Specialist Seeks More Funding for Execution of Child Rights Law in Kaduna

John Shiklam in Kaduna

A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Child Protection Specialist, Dr. Willy  Mamah, has appealed to the Kaduna state government for more funding for the implementation of the  child rights protection law.
Mamah made the appeal at the weekend in an interview with journalists in Kaduna during the training of lawyers for the implementation of the law.
Kaduna state passed the the “Child Welfare and Protection Law”, its version of the Child Right Act, in 2018.

“We are appealing to the new government (in Kaduna state)  to release more funds to the ministry of human services, which is the ministry in charge of children so that they will be able to respond and  help to implement this law”, Mamah said.
He added that without more funding, the implementation of the law will  be difficult.
He noted that even  the legal aid system is not functioning well and urged the government “to support this type of work we are doing so that we have crops of lawyers that can consistently represent children.”

Mamah also lamented the  issue of parental abandonment and called on the government to address it.
He said: “There  is a need to create a strategy where there is parental responsibility so that people don’t give birth without taking care of the children.”
Mamah noted that although government has provided free education at basic the level, but still, many children are not  in school and  roaming the streets.
“Government has to find a way of reducing the number of children that are out of school and are roaming the streets and  causing a lot of child protection concerns”, he said.

He explained that the objectives of the two-day training jointly sponsored by the Kaduna State Ministry of Justice in collaboration with UNICEF and the European Union was  to bring lawyers to form a group called “multi- tier legal aide group”.
He said the essence of the group was to implement an elementary part of the child right law, which says that when a child is accused of an offence, they have to be represented by a lawyer.

“The problem is that  representation of children by lawyers is not easy because the lawyers are not going to get paid. So because of that, it becomes difficult for children to get legal representation.
“We  felt we needed to bring lawyers  that are interested in child justice to train them on the rudiments of this law and also create a forum that will enable us represent the children whether they are in contact with the law or in conflict with the law.

“At the end of the  training, we hope to have lawyers that are well grounded in the specific nature of child justice administration,” he added.
He stressed that child rights law is a special law that is not taught in any law school, explaining that a lot of children are being detained, and the law says detention should be a measure of last resort because they don’t have anybody speaking for them.
“We are hoping that these lawyers (participating) in the training will stand up and  speak for them and we have provided stipends to encourage them to do that,” Mamah  said.

He noted that there were some children that had been victims of abuse,  but they  are shut down by the people who raped them because the culprits are rich  or are influential.
“We want to get lawyers who can stand up for such families to make sure that the perpetrators of rape and other abuses are brought to justice,” he said.

Mamah said those who participated in the training include lawyers from the State  Ministry of Justice, those in private practice, as well as  people working with the Ministry of Social Welfare.