Finding Practical Solutions to Protect the Children - By Ibrahim

I was babysitting my daughter while she was playing in the NSS Children’s Park, the only decent place in the Maldives for the Children’s to enjoy. Then my attention was drawn into a man age 30+ who was talking to a group of boys age between 11 to 13 years old. I found it odd that this person is enjoying the company of such small children and having fun, especially with the current situation of child abuse in Maldives. So I looked around the Park and I see just random people (no guardians to a child) roaming around taking, looking, and simply sitting. In many countries, if you are not accompanied or a parent you cannot enter the facilities of a Children’s Park.

First of all, let me take this opportunity to thank authorities for their work in bringing child protection into forefront of society. Recently, police is doing fine job of apprehending the child molesters. However, I also think we have to concentrate more on prevention, thus I propose one of the international best practice examples to tackle this problem to be implemented immediately.

The culture of secrecy and stigma has made child abuse really difficult issue to deal with especially once the offence has taken place. Thus, many countries are focusing more on methods of prevention together with methods of punishment. One such best practice example is the MANDATORY NOTIFICATION: Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect in South Australia. In South Australia a wide range of people are required by law to notify Families SA of situations where child abuse and neglect are suspected. This includes teachers, child caregivers, police and many others who deal with children.

I think this method serves two very important purposes. Firstly, this will increase more proper reporting and data collection which will help to formulate needed strategies. But most importantly this particular method sends strong signal to offenders that there is awide range of people in the community who are responsible to protect children from suspected offenders.

In South Australia, people who deal with children must attend one day workshop on Mandatory Notification. After attending this workshop in SA, I found this could be a possibility and may be one practical way to make public aware about the child protection issues. For instance, in SA teachers can not start teaching without attending this workshop. I do understand there will be practical difficulties to implement such policy but just like teachers getting accreditation of their certificates before started teaching. I do see a possibility of working out a plan to implement such a policy, at least for the new teachers initially.

Again, the main idea behind is let the offenders know that it will be now much more difficult for them to getaway thus preventing the offence taking place in the first place. As a parent, I call upon all the stakeholders to engage in a consultative process to better address the menace of child abuse in our country.