Holistic approach to child protection in Malawi

Children around the world experience violence across all areas of their lives including child labour, forced marriages and corporal punishment at home and in schools. All of these abuses are interlinked and need to be approached in a holistic manner rather than as individual issues. As such, while the Learn Without Fear campaign focuses on eliminating violence in schools, Plan does significant work on reducing violence against children in all settings, protecting them in every aspect of their lives.

Findings in Malawi show this cross-section of violence across a child’s life:

• 24% of school children aged 9-18years have been forced to have sex, mostly at home and at school
• 37% of children between 5-17 years old are engaged in child labour

In Malawi the campaign work is integrated into the wider child protection work to eliminate all forms of violence against children. Plan has been working towards improving the child protection system in this multi-level manner for nearly a decade.

In 2002 Plan Malawi started working in the local level with children and community groups, linking them to area and district child protection services.

In 2006, a review of child protection revealed that there were many gaps in legislation, no national child protection policy and structures and services at all levels were weak. Plan has been lobbying for improvements in child protection policy, and as such welcome the new Child Care, Protection and Justice Bill which was passed in Malawi in June 2010. We continue to lobby for legislation which explicitly focuses on the abolition of corporal punishment, sexual violence and bullying in schools.

To address all thefindings, between 2008-2010 Plan Malawi implemented the project ‘Strengthening District Child Protection Systems’ across the country.

This project has helped to link informal community mechanisms to formal mechanisms. As such when incidents of violence at school are reported at a local level -it is estimated 60% of all incidents are reported in Malawi – they can now pass up through the correct procedures and as such perpetrators can be properly held to account for their actions.

January 2011