Children’s rights protected by new law in Tanzania

Promoting, protecting, and maintaining the welfare and rights of children are the aims of a new government bill in Tanzania on Mainland Tanzania. The act includes the right to grow up with parents and the right to name and nationality as well as basic rights such as food, shelter, clothing, medical care, immunization, education and the right to play and leisure. "A child shall have a right of opinion,” said the minister for Community Development, Gender and Children Magareth Sitta. “No person shall deprive a child capable of forming views the right to express an opinion, to be listened to and to participate in decisions which affect his well-being," she said tabling the bill for the Law of the Child Act, 2009.

The landmark law will basically make the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) part of the East African country’s law and will give a legal framework through which the rights of the country’s children can be protected. Tanzania signed the CRC, 19 years ago. But legal protection for children was disorganised, and many laws were outdated. These inadequate laws provided scarcely any protection for children at risk. “This is a huge step forward,” Heimo Laakkonen, working for The United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Tanzania after the bill finally went through parliament on Wednesday, after two days of debate. “With the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child just around the corner, this gives us, and Tanzania’s children, two monumental achievements to celebrate.”

The new law reflects many of the most serious challenges facing children in Tanzania today. It tackles issues such as discrimination, the right to a name and nationality, the rights and duties of parents, the right to opinion and the right to protection from torture and degrading treatment. The Rights of the child law also lays out the system for ensuring justice for children, whether they come into contact with the legal system as offenders, witnesses or victims. And it defines processes to ensure protection for children without families, including international adoption.

The new law is not without its shortcomings. For example, it does not address discrimination regarding the legal age of marriage, which is still 15 years for girls and 18 years for boys, and it does not abolish corporal punishment. But Mr Laakkonen pointed out that even with these gaps, it can make an enormous difference for children in Tanzania: “The good news is the tremendous solidarity among all the partners who have come forward during the legislative process. We all have a stake in bringing the Law of the Child to life.”

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children