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| Samuel Obeng Badu |
Samuel Obeng Badu, known by many as Bro. Samuel is a final year social work student in the University of Ghana. He has recently developed interest in the national issues and that of issues related to the welfare of the people in the country. He is having lots of write ups and articles been published on the various news platforms. He is on it again with other four fellow students who are also students from the social work department of the University of Ghana. Here they speak to the issue of child abuse and why victims must be protected.
Child abuse is not just physical violence directed at a child. It is any form of maltreatment by an adult, which is violent or threatening for the child. This includes neglect. When child abuse occurs in the home and the abuser is, for example, the child's parent or care-giver, this is a form of domestic violence.
In this article we will only hammer on the Physical Abuse and that of the Emotional Abuse.
Physical Abuse occurs when a child is purposely physically injured or put at risk of harm by another person. When this happens, the child is exposed to all kinds of injuries since they are being abused. It is also defined as the physical injuries inflicted on a child by others than accidental means. Physical abuse often starts gradually, sometimes from multiple slaps progressively become worse over time. One thing we must note is that physical violence is always illegal.
Physical abuse involves; kicking, slapping, pushing or shoving, throwing things, force feeding or denying the child food, biting etc. There are some unexplained injuries such as bruises, fractures and burns. This abuse really hurt the child a lot. It leads to so many risk factors in our community or society. Some physical issues the child might undergo include; premature death, physical disability, learning disabilities, substance abuse and also health problems which includes heart disease, immune disorders, chronic lung disease and cancer. There are many preventive ways to curb child abuse in our families or homes, communities or societies.
Emotional Abuse: it is the Means of injuring a child’s self-esteem or emotional well-being. It includes verbal and emotional assault such as continually berating or belittling a child as well as isolating, ignoring or rejecting a child. Emotional abuse is also the way to control another person by using emotion to criticize, embarrass, shame, blame or manipulate another person. Emotional abuse kills the self-esteem the child has and this really deforms the confidentiality in a child. It sometimes leads to loss of interest or enthusiasm, depression, loss of acquired development skills in the child.
The child also feels neglected and he or she engages into social vices such as armed robbery, prostitution as a result of that. This also decreases child performance in class since he or she doesn’t feel loved by his parents or loved ones. The child also lack good parenting skills which decrease the child ability to care for others. This also causes challenges with intimacy and trust. It causes inability to cope with stress and frustrations which harms the child’s mental ability. The child is exposed to all this kind of issues and this affects the child’s mental health.
Some preventive factors includes, offering your child love and affection: listen to your child, nurture and be involved in your child’s life to develop trust and good communication. When good communication skill is developed the child feel free to tell you his or her problems and the child begins to trust you as well.
This helps you to establish a good rapport with the child. When the child feel loved and cared by his or her parents or caretaker, it increases the self-esteem in the child and the also develops the ability to open up and socialize in the community or society.
Do not respond to anger: Do not immediately respond to anger when your child upsets you because it might lead to physical and emotional abuse on the child. If you feel overwhelmed or out of control, just take a break and never respond immediately or quickly. This might lead to you causing harm on the child. You can consult your doctor or therapist to help you learn how to cope with stress or anger and better interact with the child than you taking immediately responds or actions.
Supervise or attend to your child when there is the need to do so. Supervising the child helps you the parents or caretaker know the weaknesses of the child so you can help the child improve and work out on that. Supervision is very important in every family
Child abuse results exposes children to many risk in the society. Many children are abused in their various homes which makes them leave their homes for the street to find shelter there. The risk factors involved in child abuse include the following
Living in dangerous neighborhoods. Children who are abused result in living in dangerous neighborhood when they flee from the abuse they go through. When they leave, they end up living in dangerous places in the society which affects their moral upbringing. Dangerous neighborhoods makes the children learn things that aren’t good for their lives and they end up in bad behaviors. Child abuse changes the whole life of the child and makes him or her adopt some behaviors which are not necessary. The whole concept of the child abuse can make the children leave their homes to seek refuge elsewhere. The place they intend on seeking refuge might be a very dangerous neighborhood.
Also, substance abuse is also a risk factor as a result of child abuse. The children who are abused have a high risk of using and abusing drugs. This is due to the fact that there is no parental control or anyone watching the kids. When children are abused, they leave their various homes and stay on the streets. As they live on the streets, the peers they end up with introduce them to the drugs. The streets which is not a good place of shelter for these kids makes the children learn new habits which is using and abusing drugs. Sometimes the parent who abuse their children also abuses drugs which the children also learn from and abuse drugs as well. When their parents are not around, they put it up to themselves to try the drugs which they end up being addicts.
Moreover, teenage pregnancy is also a risk factor as a result of child abuse. When abused children leave their various homes, they are at the risk of being raped by bad individuals which they can get pregnant as a result of that. Child abuse put many children especially females ones at the risk of being pregnant.
Some of the children engage in prostitution as a means of survival to cater for their daily needs. Through that, they can get pregnant being one of the risk factor they face. The boys also indulge in criminal activities such as armed robbery and petty thefts. In this context, they do not have any means of survival so they engage in such acts. If abused children indulge in such acts, it leads to an increase in social vices in the community.
Children who are abused might fall under the risk factors identified above.
In order to control this social problem, the Government of Ghana has signed into conventions and treaties which champion the rights of children. The Government has also developed the Constitution that also spells out the rights of children in Ghana. Some local and international legal instruments that protects the rights of the child includes: United Nations Convention on the Rights if the Child, 1992 Constitution of Ghana (section 28), and Children’s Act 1998 (Act 560), Domestic Violence Act 2007 and Human Trafficking Act 2005 (Act 694). We will elaborate on a few of them in the subsequent paragraphs:
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC) was established on the 20th of November, 1989 and has been signed by 195 countries making it the most widely accepted document across the document. The Convention has 54 articles in all while articles 1-42 are about the rights of the child. Also, ‘the CRC explains that the particular vulnerability of children to abuse is because they are also the weakest in society’ (Issahaku, 2018). Thus, the need to protect them.
In seeking the best interest of the child, which is a guiding principle of the convention, Article 19 urges the state government ‘to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child’. However, ‘despite the endorsement of the Millenium Development Goals and the UNCRC, little is being done to provide adequate and effective professional, educational and psychosocial intervention for the children in the sub-region’(Sossou & Yogtiba, 2009 p.1220)
Also, the Children’s Act of Ghana Act 560 is an act ‘to reform and consolidate the law relating to children, to provide for the rights of the child, maintenance and adoption, regulate child labour and apprenticeship, for ancillary matters concerning children generally and to provide for related matters’ (Act 560, p.6). Article 13 outlines the protection of the child from torture and degrading treatment. Article 14 also stipulates the child’s right to refuse betrothal and marriage. It also takes into consideration the rights of children with disabilities.
Moreover, the rights of the child are spelt out in the 1992 constitution of Ghana. This is the largest constitution in Ghana. Section 28 of the constitution focuses on the rights of children and also the role of parents and guardians in ‘undertaking the obligation of care, maintenance and upbringing of their children’. Here, the law recognizes the role of parents in the child’s life and how their relations towards the children affect them.
The law also ensures ‘the protection of the child against exposure to physical and moral hazards’, ‘engaging in work that is a threat to his or her health, education and development’ and also ‘safeguards the child torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.
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