Date: 01/06/2005
Source: The Presidency
Title: E Pahad: International Children’s Day debate, NCOP
Address by Dr EG Pahad, Minister in The Presidency, on the occasion of the NCOP debate on International Children's Day
Chairperson
Honourable members
Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the International Day of the Child.
As you are aware, in South Africa we celebrate national Children’s Day on the first Saturday in November every year. It is also time for us more publicly to demonstrate our solidarity with the rest of the international community by mobilising, advocating and promoting the celebration of International Children’s Day.
Children are not the private property of their parents, they have the right to expect support, care and love from their parents, but they also have the right to expect other sources of support and care from their government and society. It is often said that a government must be judged by the extent to which it cares for the well being of its most marginalised and vulnerable in society. And in our case that really and truly refers to all our children but particularly those of our children who live under conditions of poverty.
The late Oliver Tambo, former President of the African National Congress, once wrote that "The children of any nation are its future. A country, a movement, a person that does not value its youth and children does not deserve its future." To be truly deserving of our future we have sought to ensure that in our Constitution children have rights and the state has obligations to protect and meet those rights.
In particular Section 28 notes that:
Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.
For us children’s rights are an integral part of human rights. By spelling out the rights of children in our Constitution we have moved decisively in the direction of the vision for the future of our children so eloquently expressed by the late Comrade Oliver Tambo who speaking in 1987 at a conference in Harare, on Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa, said, “We cannot be true liberators unless the liberation we will achieve guarantees all children the rights to life, health, happiness and free development, respecting the individuality, inclinations and capabilities of each child”.
The wellbeing and the rights of the South African child remain significant challenges in our second decade of democracy. Too large a group of our children in South Africa still live under dire conditions of poverty, without access to basic social services. We have a constitutional obligation to make sure that we improve the living conditions of our children, to enable them to develop their talents and capacities to their full potential.
We recognise that there are many inter-related factors that combine in complicated ways to produce children in good health who are confident, content, competent, resilient and socially responsible and ready to take their rightful place as valued and contributing members of our society. We also recognise that child poverty does not exist in isolation. Child poverty is a reflection of family poverty and poverty and underdevelopment in society at large.
Poverty and underdevelopment, Chairperson, depletes the talents and capacities of our children; it robs our children of their rights and their futures. Children must be protected, nurtured and assisted to become beneficiaries of and contributors to the creation of a truly non-racial and non-sexist South Africa – thus our consistent and determined focus on addressing poverty and underdevelopment in society.
We are working to provide early intervention and early childhood education and care services designed to support parents by helping reduce social exclusion linked to poverty, unemployment, marginal employment, disempowerment and social isolation. Dependable care for children is essential if mothers are to participate in the labour force. Poor accessibility to adequate child care contributes to gender exclusion from the workforce and to marginalisation of women across social classes. Without early intervention and early childhood education and care services, parents living in poverty do not have access to opportunities for education, training or paid work.
Investing in the education of our children is the key to providing the intellectual and social stimulation that form the foundation for the future success of our children. Improving access to education also improves the life quality for our children in the here-and-now. Our government is going beyond basic health and safety requirements, to supporting children’s development and learning.
Our programme of action has to be multifaceted and targeted at children as well as adults and families. Undoubtedly, protection and social security remain important foci because a significant number of our children come from families living in poverty, and for whom social security provisions remain the only means of income. Thus by default, and through no fault of their own, these children inhabit the second economy with all of its devastating impacts. Breaking the vicious cycles of poverty and underdevelopment and closing the socio-economic distances and gaps between the first and second economies are essential pre and co-requisites to improving the well being of the children of our nation. To ensure that we meet our obligations to the children of our country in general and specifically to girl children and other multiply disadvantaged children:
* We have committed to the extension of child support grant-within two years with an additional 3.2 million children becoming eligible as the upper-age limit reaches 14;
* In the next three years we will spend R14,2 billion to help our people to have access to basic shelter;
* We are working to halve poverty in our country by 2014;
* We are investing in the National School Nutrition Programme, including social mobilisation for food gardens. We are developing a plan for implementation with community participation in 21 nodes; and
* We are committed to ensuring that there is no learner and student learning under a tree, mud-school or under any dangerous conditions. We are intensifying efforts to deal with logjams.
By meeting these targets we will have made progress and created better living conditions for our children. But this is not sufficient. We need a robust, rigorous monitoring and evaluation framework to track the advances of the wellbeing of our children. Our challenge in the year to come is to build on the capacity of local government to deliver programmes and services to children in need.
In the past decade, South Africa has been able to respond appropriately to international instruments that deal with children's issues. The Office on the Rights of the Child (ORC) in The Presidency was established with a mandate to ensure that our government structures and advances the interests of children in South Africa. It also monitors implementation of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we ratified in 1995. We are currently completing our second Country Report to the UN Committee.
Chairperson let us recall the wise saying “It takes a village to raise a child”. So when our children go to bed hungry and are not well fed; when they are begging and not in school; when they repeatedly sleep on the streets and not at home; when they are malnourished and not healthy; when they are abused and are not safe; we are all culpable and all responsible. As communities we have to ask what are we doing to support our children?
As government we put considerable resources in education, health care and other programmes that directly benefit children, we can, and do, pass legislation to realise the rights of the child and we implement policies to protect our children against all forms of abuse and exploitation. The Office on the Rights of the Child continues to play a role in ensuring that issues on the rights of the child remains on the agendas of the legislatures, executives and the judiciary.
But if we say that it takes a village to raise a child then we must build lasting and meaningful partnerships with organisations in civil society that work with and on behalf of children. We must mobilise more community resources for early childhood education, care and activities through the expanded public works programme. We must pull together to convert the mandate of this government into meaningful and measurable programmes for our children.
Indeed Chairperson, let us all work together and continue to develop a human centred approach to our policies, programmes and our work that puts children first. Protecting and advancing the right of children to develop and thrive in safe secure and healthy environments must be a top priority for all of us. Let us be mindful of the words of Charles Dickens, who in the Great Expectations wrote “In their little worlds in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice …."
We have a collective responsibility to future generations to strengthen our measures to protect and look after our children and in so doing to prepare them to contribute to the building of a non-racial, non sexist, people centred South Africa.
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
1 June 2005
Source: The Presidency
Title: E Pahad: International Children’s Day debate, NCOP
Address by Dr EG Pahad, Minister in The Presidency, on the occasion of the NCOP debate on International Children's Day
Chairperson
Honourable members
Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the International Day of the Child.
As you are aware, in South Africa we celebrate national Children’s Day on the first Saturday in November every year. It is also time for us more publicly to demonstrate our solidarity with the rest of the international community by mobilising, advocating and promoting the celebration of International Children’s Day.
Children are not the private property of their parents, they have the right to expect support, care and love from their parents, but they also have the right to expect other sources of support and care from their government and society. It is often said that a government must be judged by the extent to which it cares for the well being of its most marginalised and vulnerable in society. And in our case that really and truly refers to all our children but particularly those of our children who live under conditions of poverty.
The late Oliver Tambo, former President of the African National Congress, once wrote that "The children of any nation are its future. A country, a movement, a person that does not value its youth and children does not deserve its future." To be truly deserving of our future we have sought to ensure that in our Constitution children have rights and the state has obligations to protect and meet those rights.
In particular Section 28 notes that:
Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.
For us children’s rights are an integral part of human rights. By spelling out the rights of children in our Constitution we have moved decisively in the direction of the vision for the future of our children so eloquently expressed by the late Comrade Oliver Tambo who speaking in 1987 at a conference in Harare, on Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa, said, “We cannot be true liberators unless the liberation we will achieve guarantees all children the rights to life, health, happiness and free development, respecting the individuality, inclinations and capabilities of each child”.
The wellbeing and the rights of the South African child remain significant challenges in our second decade of democracy. Too large a group of our children in South Africa still live under dire conditions of poverty, without access to basic social services. We have a constitutional obligation to make sure that we improve the living conditions of our children, to enable them to develop their talents and capacities to their full potential.
We recognise that there are many inter-related factors that combine in complicated ways to produce children in good health who are confident, content, competent, resilient and socially responsible and ready to take their rightful place as valued and contributing members of our society. We also recognise that child poverty does not exist in isolation. Child poverty is a reflection of family poverty and poverty and underdevelopment in society at large.
Poverty and underdevelopment, Chairperson, depletes the talents and capacities of our children; it robs our children of their rights and their futures. Children must be protected, nurtured and assisted to become beneficiaries of and contributors to the creation of a truly non-racial and non-sexist South Africa – thus our consistent and determined focus on addressing poverty and underdevelopment in society.
We are working to provide early intervention and early childhood education and care services designed to support parents by helping reduce social exclusion linked to poverty, unemployment, marginal employment, disempowerment and social isolation. Dependable care for children is essential if mothers are to participate in the labour force. Poor accessibility to adequate child care contributes to gender exclusion from the workforce and to marginalisation of women across social classes. Without early intervention and early childhood education and care services, parents living in poverty do not have access to opportunities for education, training or paid work.
Investing in the education of our children is the key to providing the intellectual and social stimulation that form the foundation for the future success of our children. Improving access to education also improves the life quality for our children in the here-and-now. Our government is going beyond basic health and safety requirements, to supporting children’s development and learning.
Our programme of action has to be multifaceted and targeted at children as well as adults and families. Undoubtedly, protection and social security remain important foci because a significant number of our children come from families living in poverty, and for whom social security provisions remain the only means of income. Thus by default, and through no fault of their own, these children inhabit the second economy with all of its devastating impacts. Breaking the vicious cycles of poverty and underdevelopment and closing the socio-economic distances and gaps between the first and second economies are essential pre and co-requisites to improving the well being of the children of our nation. To ensure that we meet our obligations to the children of our country in general and specifically to girl children and other multiply disadvantaged children:
* We have committed to the extension of child support grant-within two years with an additional 3.2 million children becoming eligible as the upper-age limit reaches 14;
* In the next three years we will spend R14,2 billion to help our people to have access to basic shelter;
* We are working to halve poverty in our country by 2014;
* We are investing in the National School Nutrition Programme, including social mobilisation for food gardens. We are developing a plan for implementation with community participation in 21 nodes; and
* We are committed to ensuring that there is no learner and student learning under a tree, mud-school or under any dangerous conditions. We are intensifying efforts to deal with logjams.
By meeting these targets we will have made progress and created better living conditions for our children. But this is not sufficient. We need a robust, rigorous monitoring and evaluation framework to track the advances of the wellbeing of our children. Our challenge in the year to come is to build on the capacity of local government to deliver programmes and services to children in need.
In the past decade, South Africa has been able to respond appropriately to international instruments that deal with children's issues. The Office on the Rights of the Child (ORC) in The Presidency was established with a mandate to ensure that our government structures and advances the interests of children in South Africa. It also monitors implementation of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we ratified in 1995. We are currently completing our second Country Report to the UN Committee.
Chairperson let us recall the wise saying “It takes a village to raise a child”. So when our children go to bed hungry and are not well fed; when they are begging and not in school; when they repeatedly sleep on the streets and not at home; when they are malnourished and not healthy; when they are abused and are not safe; we are all culpable and all responsible. As communities we have to ask what are we doing to support our children?
As government we put considerable resources in education, health care and other programmes that directly benefit children, we can, and do, pass legislation to realise the rights of the child and we implement policies to protect our children against all forms of abuse and exploitation. The Office on the Rights of the Child continues to play a role in ensuring that issues on the rights of the child remains on the agendas of the legislatures, executives and the judiciary.
But if we say that it takes a village to raise a child then we must build lasting and meaningful partnerships with organisations in civil society that work with and on behalf of children. We must mobilise more community resources for early childhood education, care and activities through the expanded public works programme. We must pull together to convert the mandate of this government into meaningful and measurable programmes for our children.
Indeed Chairperson, let us all work together and continue to develop a human centred approach to our policies, programmes and our work that puts children first. Protecting and advancing the right of children to develop and thrive in safe secure and healthy environments must be a top priority for all of us. Let us be mindful of the words of Charles Dickens, who in the Great Expectations wrote “In their little worlds in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice …."
We have a collective responsibility to future generations to strengthen our measures to protect and look after our children and in so doing to prepare them to contribute to the building of a non-racial, non sexist, people centred South Africa.
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
1 June 2005
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