Tougher laws are needed to curb child abuse, say Kenyan lawmakers stunned by the sharp rise in violent attacks against children, local media reported Wednesday.
Thousands of Kenyan children are abandoned, beaten, raped, burned and tortured and the offenders are usually their own relatives or family acquaintances, encouraged by the nation’s weak enforcement of child protection laws.
”It is time the government stopped trivializing children issues,” Kenyan child rights activist Julie Maranya told the country’s Daily Nation newspaper. ”Policies and laws must be clear on children because the current law is lenient and culprits get away.”
The recent spate of attacks against children, which often appear only as news briefs in the country’s daily newspapers, has horrified Kenyans.
Kenyan police arrested a 45-year-old man for decapitating his one- year-old nephew and boiling the head. The incident took place after a dispute with the boy’s mother, police said.
Earlier this week, an 18-year-old Kenyan man convicted of raping a four-year-old girl was sentenced to life in prison, the first-ever court ruling invoking a new law that sets harsher penalties for child sexual assaults.
But life in prison does not go far enough, according to several legislators who vowed to support a parliamentary bid to castrate child sex offenders.
Several politicians are seeking the death penalty for child rapists.
Tracking statistics on child abuse is difficult, aid groups say.
Since most children are abused by family members, many of them are discouraged from reporting the crimes to police. But a Nairobi children’s hospital alone reported treating more than 3 000 patients, mostly for sexual abuse, since it opened two years ago.
”The fact that we are reading more and more about these cases is because the public is becoming more aware of the rights of children,” said Agnetta Mirikau, a project officer for UNICEF, the U.N.’s fund for children.
Kenya’s 2002 Children’s Act outlawed child labour, raised the age of sexual consent in Kenya from 14 to 16, and set mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of raping a child aged 14 and under.
Under the act, the government set up 43 courts specifically to deal with child abuse cases.
Analysts say that poverty and AIDS are fuelling Kenya’s increase in child abuses cases.
More than 50,00 children roam the dingy streets of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Some of them are fleeing abusive parents, but, in many cases, the children have been abandoned or orphaned by AIDS.
Girls are particularly at risk, especially in the tourist hubs of Nairobi and Mombasa where they often are forced into prostitution, aid workers say. Also, reports of girls being raped by their school teachers and police officers are common in Kenya. — Sapa-DPA