A Child Protection Advisor from the Catholic Aid Agency for England and Wales (CAFOD), Kate Iwi has faulted the culture of silence in reporting Child abuse cases in Malawi and calls for considerable measures to end the abuses.
Iwi said this while addressing participants of a two-day workshop organized by Education Department of Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) for training of trainers (ToT) in Child Protection in Lilongwe.
“There is a culture here in Malawi where children are not encouraged to speak out and complain,” she said adding that “Although some researches indicate that there are plenty of child abuse cases in the country, yet we don’t even really know at what is the problem because of this culture of silence.”
According to Iwi, the problem leads to poor performance for children school as an effect of not being protected by the society.
She said that in such scenarios the abused children turn to be arrogant, violent and ultimately end up abusing others in future.
Iwi also commended the Catholic Church in Malawi for taking an initiative to protect Children from all forms of abuses in the society.
“Until now the Catholic Church in Malawi has worked tirelessly to improve the welfare of children living in situations of poverty and abuse. However there haven’t been any mechanisms for encouraging complaints of child abuse from the church and its institutions, nor has there been a team of people within each diocese who are equipped to respond to such complaints,” she said.
Education Secretary for the Episcopal Conference of Malawi, Br. Pascal Mtuwana said it is against this background that ECM brought together the diocesan child protection agents to equip them with skills on how best to raise awareness locally, establish local complaints mechanisms such as hotlines telephone numbers, suggestion boxes etc in an effort to bring awareness of the problem to the society.
ECM is implementing the Child Protection project in a bid to contribute to strengthening the capacity of the Catholic Church in Malawi in dealing with issues of child abuse in order to create a safe environment for children.
