More than a million Malawian children are still being used as labourers, according to the latest available estimates, but legislation compelling birth registrations has been delayed by government infighting and the resultant political turmoil.
A senior official of the national registration bureau in the president's office, Lawrence Hussein, told local media in March 2008 that "Malawian children have no document to show when they were born. We can hardly tell who is a child."
The colonial-era 1904 Birth and Deaths Act, which does not require citizens to be registered at birth, nor deaths to be reported to the authorities, is still in force.
Consequently, even though Malawi is a signatory to numerous conventions against child labour, including the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, the 1973 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 138 (setting a minimum working age of 18), and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 (outlawing child labour), child protection officers cannot verify the ages of people suspected of being employed as child labourers.
The National Registration Bill was presented to parliament in 2006 for ratification, but has yet to be passed because deliberations over annual budgets and legislation have been repeatedly suspended due to political wrangling.
Political wrangling
Last month, Malawi's former president, Bakili Muluzi, was arrested when he returned from a holiday in Britain, on allegations of plotting a coup against President Bingu wa Mutharika. The arrest came after numerous political crises, including corruption charges against Muluzi.
Muluzi won the country's first democratic elections in 1994, after deposing Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who had ruled the country since it won its independence from Britain in 1964. Muluzi picked Mutharika as his succesor in 2004.
After capturing the presidency, Mutharika quit the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and set up the Democratic Progressive Party, with the support of 60 former UDF colleagues who crossed the floor to join him in his minority government.
The UDF claims floor crossing is unconstitutional, and that a minority party cannot rule, which has led to an impasse in the legislature. Both Mutharika and Muluzi intend contesting the 2009 presidential election.
A registration system has been put in place by the national statistics office and sponsored by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), so that birth certificates can be introduced in nine of Malawi's 28 districts as soon as the legislation is passed, but a source close to the process told IRIN that unless the bill is ratified, little progress could be made in implementing this system.
At present, the burden of registration rests on the parent or guardian to travel to Blantyre, Malawi's second city, to register the birth of a child if they so wish; they also have to pay the administrative costs of issuing a birth certificate.
Impact of HIV/AIDS
"With the high levels of poverty in Malawi people cannot afford to pay the transport to get their documentation to registration offices, let alone pay for the birth certificates themselves. The new legislation is needed urgently because the work that is being done at the moment is mostly preparation, and as such is ineffective without the legislation," the source told IRIN.
The last government survey of child labour and trafficking was published in 2002 and revealed that about 1.4 million youngsters, or 29 percent of the population younger than 17, was engaged in child labour; of these, about 734,000 were working in the agriculture industry, and 288,000 were said to be involved in hazardous labour.
According to UNICEF child protection officer Seamus McRoibin, aside from widespread poverty, the effect of the country's high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate – about 16 percent of people aged between 15 and 49 are infected, resulting in about 400,000 HIV/AIDS orphans under 15 years old - has also contributed to the high level of child labour.
"The ministry for labour is very good, and it has set up a number of initiatives that are trying to tackle this huge problem. But although efforts to tackle child labour are not operating in a legal vacuum, the laws are not specific enough and people are not being punished correctly," he said.
Bright Cakambau, executive director of the Youth and Children's Rights Shield (YCRIS), a local non-governmental organisation advocating the rights of children, said rolling out the new registration laws would have an immediate positive benefit.
"If we could get every child registered at birth, with a birth certificate, then we would have concrete evidence to take to the courts. It is difficult to say what age a juvenile in his mid-teenage years is without proof."
Paper trails
Despite problems with registration, Cakambau, who is based in Dedza, a town about 100km south of the capital, Lilongwe, said the success attributable to a labour ministry initiative that aims to build capacity in rural communities to combat child labour were a cause for optimism.
Over three years ago Keneriyo Feston, 11, was taken from his single mother by a male relative who promised to give him some "light work". But the work was far from easy, and his mother did not see him for two years.
"The work was very hard for me, as I was forced to herd many cattle on my own. For a long time I never saw my mother and I was not paid. I did not like the work but I did not know where I was or how to get home," he told IRIN.
Feston was tracked down and rescued by another male relative, Cakambau said, but in the absence of birth certificates a system was being implemented to try and deter the unscrupulous by making it more difficult for people to use child labour.
"We have been putting in place structures at national, district and village level in relation to recruitment of workers. Any person who wants to employ labour must first go to the National Labour Office and get a letter that allows them to recruit," Cakambau said.
"They take this letter to the traditional authority at district level, which verifies it and issues another letter that can be taken to village chiefs, citing who can be employed and for what purpose.
"If they do not have these letters they cannot recruit in a village, and if they are found doing so they will be prosecuted," he said. "The system creates a trail that the authorities can follow in instances of suspected child labour."
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Ringwood scouts to meet comrades in Malawi
FOUR Ringwood Scouts will be swapping the Ringwood countryside for the African scrub in an intrepid cultural exchange this summer.
William Andrews, Tim Skelley, Calum Allardyce and Ben White, all aged 18, from the First Poulner Explorer Scouts are going to Mzuzu in Northern Malawi to share scouting skills, the ideology of scouting and the fundamental ethos at the roots of scouting.
Now the youngsters have to raise £2,400.
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After a plant sale in the Furlong Shopping Centre in Ringwood the group raised nearly £500.
The initiative is partly funded by the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council, the First Poulner Scout Group, with donations from the Fordingbridge Co-op and a youth charity.
The four boys, are part of a larger group of 16 Poulner Scouts who are on a two and a half-week trip to meet the Malawi scouts and to make some desks and chairs for 400 pupils for the local school.
The prototype has been made in Ringwood, but the boys will be making the desks in Malawi from local sustainable materials.
The four Ringwood boys who are staying on, will be helping to create an eight acre camp site in Mzuzu.
The site was acquired by money raised by the First Poulner Scout Group and, when it is finished, they will be handing it over to the Malawi authorities for the local Scouts.
Meanwile William, Calum, Tim and Ben will spend about three months creating a football pitch, building a fire pit, damming a river to create a swimming pool and levelling land to make it suitable for tents.
The organiser of this trip Group Scout Leader Colin Andrews said: "We were very glad of this opportunity for the Furlong plant sale, to raise money for this trip.
"Eventually we would like to bring the Malawi Scouts back to Ringwood which we will do when we have raised enough money.
"We are already planning their trip in three years time. I think the boys see this as an adventure, but they will be doing some very useful work while they are away and I am sure they will never quite see life in the same way again. Everyone will be learning from this experience"
William Andrews, Tim Skelley, Calum Allardyce and Ben White, all aged 18, from the First Poulner Explorer Scouts are going to Mzuzu in Northern Malawi to share scouting skills, the ideology of scouting and the fundamental ethos at the roots of scouting.
Now the youngsters have to raise £2,400.
advertisement
After a plant sale in the Furlong Shopping Centre in Ringwood the group raised nearly £500.
The initiative is partly funded by the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council, the First Poulner Scout Group, with donations from the Fordingbridge Co-op and a youth charity.
The four boys, are part of a larger group of 16 Poulner Scouts who are on a two and a half-week trip to meet the Malawi scouts and to make some desks and chairs for 400 pupils for the local school.
The prototype has been made in Ringwood, but the boys will be making the desks in Malawi from local sustainable materials.
The four Ringwood boys who are staying on, will be helping to create an eight acre camp site in Mzuzu.
The site was acquired by money raised by the First Poulner Scout Group and, when it is finished, they will be handing it over to the Malawi authorities for the local Scouts.
Meanwile William, Calum, Tim and Ben will spend about three months creating a football pitch, building a fire pit, damming a river to create a swimming pool and levelling land to make it suitable for tents.
The organiser of this trip Group Scout Leader Colin Andrews said: "We were very glad of this opportunity for the Furlong plant sale, to raise money for this trip.
"Eventually we would like to bring the Malawi Scouts back to Ringwood which we will do when we have raised enough money.
"We are already planning their trip in three years time. I think the boys see this as an adventure, but they will be doing some very useful work while they are away and I am sure they will never quite see life in the same way again. Everyone will be learning from this experience"
Beating the global food crisis
Britain has joined a global summit on soaring world food prices as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation urged wealthy nations to use the summit to agree "urgent and concrete actions" to address rising malnutrition rates.
Malcolm Fleming, of Oxfam Scotland, is in Malawi, where he spoke to a poor family which has learned how to manage its food supplies, through a government programme.
Today in countries from Haiti to Indonesia families are struggling, and in many cases failing, to put food on the table as food prices rise dramatically.
Estere Chiperenga has extra food for her family this year
However, Estere Chiperenga has, perhaps surprisingly, enough food for her family of eight.
Grandmother Estere, who is in her 40s, is a small farmer in Wruma, a rural area in Phalombe district of southern Malawi.
I met her a few days ago when I visited her village to meet with her and her neighbours to discuss how Malawi has managed to 'buck the trend' of the world food crisis.
Estere's family is one of the poorest families in a poor rural community in the 13th poorest country in the world. Yet despite facing shortages in the past, this year she was able to show me bags of maize, the staple food here, stored in her home.
Yet more maize, still unbagged, sits in her small brick food store. Normally, she and her husband would manage to harvest about four or five bags of maize in a year. This year she estimates she has 15 bags.
With that extra food she is confident that she will be able to feed her family and also have extra left over to sell and generate some valuable income.
Poor farmers
So what has helped families like Estere's get to this position, whilst elsewhere the world is facing possibly its worst ever food crisis?
Only a few years ago Malawi faced its own crisis, with droughts driving the country to the edge of famine, making food distributions from the likes of Oxfam and the World Food Programme essential to people's survival.
Now, while such food distribution is still available for the most vulnerable, many hundreds of thousands of families just like Estere's have food in stock for the months ahead.
This change is a result of an agricultural inputs programme implemented by the government of Malawi, with support from donor agencies, including the UK Government.
One of the main planks of the programme has been a fertiliser subsidy allowing poor farmers, typically farming small plots of 0.4 of a hectare, to buy and use fertiliser, thus greatly improving their harvest.
Over two million families have benefited from the programme, with national food security established and other countries in Southern Africa now looking to Malawi as the example to follow.
Yes there are still difficulties, and yes putting food on the table can still be a struggle, but in a country which doesn't have its problems to seek, this is a definite success story, made all the more noteworthy given the growing crisis elsewhere.
Tackling that crisis is the purpose of an emergency United Nations meeting in Rome today (3 June).
As politicians, diplomats and officials meet to discuss how to best respond to the problem, Oxfam is calling on them to implement a co-ordinated global action plan to address the immediate needs of 300 million poor people worldwide.
One of the actions that governments need to take is to follow the Malawian example and support poor small-scale farmers across the developing world.
In the EU and US farmers have enjoyed substantial subsidies for decades. In the developing world, in countries like Malawi, it just takes a little to make a big change for families like Estere Chiperenga's.
Malcolm Fleming, of Oxfam Scotland, is in Malawi, where he spoke to a poor family which has learned how to manage its food supplies, through a government programme.
Today in countries from Haiti to Indonesia families are struggling, and in many cases failing, to put food on the table as food prices rise dramatically.
Estere Chiperenga has extra food for her family this year
However, Estere Chiperenga has, perhaps surprisingly, enough food for her family of eight.
Grandmother Estere, who is in her 40s, is a small farmer in Wruma, a rural area in Phalombe district of southern Malawi.
I met her a few days ago when I visited her village to meet with her and her neighbours to discuss how Malawi has managed to 'buck the trend' of the world food crisis.
Estere's family is one of the poorest families in a poor rural community in the 13th poorest country in the world. Yet despite facing shortages in the past, this year she was able to show me bags of maize, the staple food here, stored in her home.
Yet more maize, still unbagged, sits in her small brick food store. Normally, she and her husband would manage to harvest about four or five bags of maize in a year. This year she estimates she has 15 bags.
With that extra food she is confident that she will be able to feed her family and also have extra left over to sell and generate some valuable income.
Poor farmers
So what has helped families like Estere's get to this position, whilst elsewhere the world is facing possibly its worst ever food crisis?
Only a few years ago Malawi faced its own crisis, with droughts driving the country to the edge of famine, making food distributions from the likes of Oxfam and the World Food Programme essential to people's survival.
Now, while such food distribution is still available for the most vulnerable, many hundreds of thousands of families just like Estere's have food in stock for the months ahead.
This change is a result of an agricultural inputs programme implemented by the government of Malawi, with support from donor agencies, including the UK Government.
One of the main planks of the programme has been a fertiliser subsidy allowing poor farmers, typically farming small plots of 0.4 of a hectare, to buy and use fertiliser, thus greatly improving their harvest.
Over two million families have benefited from the programme, with national food security established and other countries in Southern Africa now looking to Malawi as the example to follow.
Yes there are still difficulties, and yes putting food on the table can still be a struggle, but in a country which doesn't have its problems to seek, this is a definite success story, made all the more noteworthy given the growing crisis elsewhere.
Tackling that crisis is the purpose of an emergency United Nations meeting in Rome today (3 June).
As politicians, diplomats and officials meet to discuss how to best respond to the problem, Oxfam is calling on them to implement a co-ordinated global action plan to address the immediate needs of 300 million poor people worldwide.
One of the actions that governments need to take is to follow the Malawian example and support poor small-scale farmers across the developing world.
In the EU and US farmers have enjoyed substantial subsidies for decades. In the developing world, in countries like Malawi, it just takes a little to make a big change for families like Estere Chiperenga's.
China set to deploy medical mission to Malawi
China which entered into partnership with Malawi end last year would be deploying a medical mission to the Southern African nation, its ambassador said on Saturday.
China’s ambassador to Malawi Lin Songtian said his country would be deploying a medical mission to Malawi before the end of June.
“I want to disclose to you that a team of medical workers, mostly doctors and specialists will arrive here around 25th June to establish a medical mission in this country,” Songtian said on Saturday, during a visit of Mzuzu Central Hospital in the northern region of Malawi.
He said the team would be deployed to Mzuzu and Lilongwe the country’s capital as part of his government’s commitment to partnership with Malawi.
The ambassador said his country prioritizes people’s needs and therefore would want to see the Warm Heart of Africa attain substantial development and improve its economy.
“Malaria is our top priority because we have noted it is a top killer. Let me share with you the information that we have a very good malaria drug in China so I would look at the possibility of Malawi accessing this,” Songtian told the country’s local daily of the Daily Times.
In another development the country’s prison department has said plans are underway to open more detention centres in order to reduce the problem of overcrowding in Malawi’s prisons.
This revelation comes after Amnesty International, a worldwide pressure group whose aim is to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights disclosed in its latest annual report that prison conditions in the Malawi were degrading.
The report, among other things, revealed that overcrowding and lack of adequate food and health care in prisons still persisted.
"Overcrowding and lack of adequate food and health care persisted and a number of 11,000 prisoners were held in jails designed to hold 5,000 inmates,” stated the report.
Prisons spokesperson Tobias Nowa said in an interview that the department was intending to open more centers as one way of addressing the problem of overcrowding.
China’s ambassador to Malawi Lin Songtian said his country would be deploying a medical mission to Malawi before the end of June.
“I want to disclose to you that a team of medical workers, mostly doctors and specialists will arrive here around 25th June to establish a medical mission in this country,” Songtian said on Saturday, during a visit of Mzuzu Central Hospital in the northern region of Malawi.
He said the team would be deployed to Mzuzu and Lilongwe the country’s capital as part of his government’s commitment to partnership with Malawi.
The ambassador said his country prioritizes people’s needs and therefore would want to see the Warm Heart of Africa attain substantial development and improve its economy.
“Malaria is our top priority because we have noted it is a top killer. Let me share with you the information that we have a very good malaria drug in China so I would look at the possibility of Malawi accessing this,” Songtian told the country’s local daily of the Daily Times.
In another development the country’s prison department has said plans are underway to open more detention centres in order to reduce the problem of overcrowding in Malawi’s prisons.
This revelation comes after Amnesty International, a worldwide pressure group whose aim is to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights disclosed in its latest annual report that prison conditions in the Malawi were degrading.
The report, among other things, revealed that overcrowding and lack of adequate food and health care in prisons still persisted.
"Overcrowding and lack of adequate food and health care persisted and a number of 11,000 prisoners were held in jails designed to hold 5,000 inmates,” stated the report.
Prisons spokesperson Tobias Nowa said in an interview that the department was intending to open more centers as one way of addressing the problem of overcrowding.
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