Urban Settings & The Liberian Child

On 28 February, UNICEF launched its ‘The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World’ report. This year’s report focuses more attention on children in urban areas. The 142-page document reveals that one billion of the world’s children live in urban areas, a number that is growing rapidly. Yet, it continued, disparities within cities reveal that many lack access to schools, health care and sanitation, despite living alongside these services. 

In an official statement posted on its website, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns that urbanization leaves hundreds of millions of children in cities and towns excluded from vital services. As reflected in its The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World report, greater urbanization is, however, inevitable. In a few years, the report says, the majority of children will grow up in towns or cities rather than in rural areas. Children born in cities already account for 60 per cent of the increase in urban population.

“When we think of poverty, the image that traditionally comes to mind is that of a child in a rural village,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “But today, an increasing number of children living in slums and shantytowns are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world, deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive.”

“Excluding these children in slums not only robs them of the chance to reach their full potential; it robs their societies of the economic benefits of having a well-educated, healthy urban population,” Lake added.

According to UNICEF, cities offer many children the advantages of urban schools, clinics and playgrounds. Yet the same cities, the world over, are also the settings for some of the greatest disparities in children’s health, education and opportunities. It added that infrastructure and services are not keeping up with urban growth in many regions and children’s basic needs are not being met. Families living in poverty often pay more for substandard services. Water, for instance, the report further asserts, can cost 50 times more in poor neighbourhoods where residents have to buy it from private vendors than it costs in wealthier neighbourhoods where households are connected directly to water mains.

UNICEF believes that the deprivations endured by children in poor urban communities are often obscured by broad statistical averages that lump together all city dwellers – rich and poor alike. When averages such as these are used in making urban policy and allocating resources, the needs of the poorest can be overlooked, it added.

Fortunately, Liberia now has a children’s law, the 2011 Children’s Law of Liberia, which was launched by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf early last month. Though this development followed more than two years of relentless advocacies by state and non-state actors, the law was finally passed on 15 September 2011 by the 52nd Legislature.

It is now the hope of every parent, every child and every well-meaning Liberian that this law doesn’t sit on the shelves [of those tasked with its implementation] to collect dust, but that it is effectively enforced so that the Liberian child can once more be brought up as he/she rightly deserves.

In this contemporary post-war context, looking around Monrovia as well as other urban [or even rural] settings, children are often seen running here and there to fend for their parents. At such tender ages (5 to 10) they are already practically being used as income-earners or breadwinners. The interesting thing is that they blindly accept that responsibility without knowledge of their rights.

Also, whenever a mother or a father is asked, ‘why send your son or daughter to sell ice water?’ for instance, the response tends be this: “Oh, I alone can’t do everything. The child needs to play his part, too.” Some parents will even tell this: “The boy [or girl] needs to help, too. After all, I gave birth to him [or her] and he [or she] did not and can never pay me enough for doing so. The only thing he [or she] can do is serve me and serve me better.”

As a result, our streets are all flooded with children selling all kinds of wares, day-in and day-out. Alarmed over the number of children roaming Monrovia’s as petty street peddlers, the Liberian Government once constituted a special task force, headed by Montserrado County Superintendent Grace Kpan, to confiscate goods from kids who were selling on the streets of Monrovia. Some of those kids whose goods were seized from various street corners were even arrested and taken to the Gender Ministry. The driving force behind government’s decision, at the time, was to ensure that children are enrolled and retained in school.

However, that exercise only lasted a couple of weeks. It gradually faded out apparently due to public outcry that majority of the children roaming Monrovia’s streets were brought in from the rural parts of the country by some individuals under the pretext of affording these children a chance to access quality education and basic social services, but then turned into domestic slaves or commercial helpers.

Whatever may be the case; there are legal tools now in place to ensure that the rights of our children are adhered to and protected. The Ministry of Education has been empowered by the new Children’s Law to provide and encourage the enrolment of children into school and re-enrolment into school or alternative forms of education for those children who may have dropped out of school. The Ministry is also tasked with the responsibility to progressively develop various forms of secondary education and progressively make it free and accessible to all children in Liberia.

Also, the Ministry of Education, according to the Law, shall work with local government authorities to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of dropout rates. The Ministry shall progressively work with local government authorities through the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take special measures in respect of female, gifted and disadvantaged children to ensure equal and equitable access to education for such children, according to the 2011 Children’s Law.

The Law further instructs the Education Ministry to work with local government authorities through the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other ministries to devise and implement programs and measures to provide early childhood education, including pre-schools. This is why we believe that if effectively enforced, this new law will ensure that the life of the Liberian child is transformed for the better.