Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

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• Procedural systems for dealing with children in conflict with the law are not child-centred and do not meet standards established under Articles 37 and 40 of the CRC. Areas where legislative provisions to implement and monitor child laws are inadequate: • With the exception, to some extent, of the courts, State institutions in this area have not been identified nor have their responsibilities been defined in order to implement the law; • There is an absence of clear guidelines and procedures for the enforcement of child-related laws; • Many stakeholders have alluded to the lack of coordination of services for children; • There is a general absence of monitoring mechanisms; • The legal environment for birth registration is characterized by cumbersome and bureaucratic procedures. There are penalties for late registration; • Children under 16 continue to be arrested and detained in adult prisons. There is no adherence to the minimum time stipulated to process such cases and children can be detained indefinitely; • Legislative provisions extending the powers and functions of a competent legal forum would enhance monitoring and accountability, and ultimately promote children’s rights. Source: Legal Reform for the Protection of Children in Mozambique, Sloth-Nielsen and Gallinetti, 2004 As noted above, the Ministry of Justice has developed a draft comprehensive Children’s Act, with the twofold objective of establishing a comprehensive legal framework for children and harmonising national law with Mozambique’s obligations as a State party to international human rights instruments. The Children’s Act, which is expected to be approved over the coming year, reaffirms the rights of all children in areas including health, education, freedom from torture, violence, exploitation and abuse, and freedom of expression and information, in addition to the right to protection of particularly vulnerable children, such as children in conflict with the law and child refugees. It also outlines the corresponding responsibilities for the promotion, respect and fulfilment of these rights: of Government; non-governmental organisations, communities and children (RM 2006c). B. Creating effective mechanisms for the implementation of the Children’s Act The 2004 legal review concluded that existing mechanisms for the enforcement of laws in relation to children are weak. There is, “a glaring absence of provisions for the implementation of laws. Roles and responsibilities are poorly defined, co-ordination and monitoring were absent and political accountability was weak” (Sloth-Nielsen and Gallinetti 2004: 6). Strengthening the implementation and enforcement of child laws is a key dimension of wider security sector reforms. 81 In this context, Mozambique is collaborating with the international community to strengthen the police, justice and prison systems. Progress on overall sector reform, however, has been mixed. The 2005 assessment of cooperation between the Government and donors in the justice sector concluded that “despite showing some advances, there has not been a substantial improvement in the justice service delivery … current constraints will continue to affect the appropriate functioning of the sector, if the reform process is not resumed with a strong impetus” (PAP 2005: 35). 81 According to UNDP, the “Justice and Security Sector refers to public institutions, organisations, and actors which have the formal mandate to ensure the safety of the state and its people against acts of violence and coercion through the promotion of transparency, the rule of law, accountability and informed debate.” http://www.undp.org/bcpr/jssr/index.htm CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS 199
C. Birth registration – guaranteeing the right to an identity Mozambique’s obligation to register children immediately after birth is given legal expression in the Civil Registry Code. Birth registration is the official and permanent recording of the birth of a child by the State. Through the act of registration, the State recognises the legal existence of a child. Registration provides legal proof of a child’s identity and is directly tied to a child’s claim to citizenship and to the rights, benefits and obligations that accrue from that citizenship. Birth registration is not only a right in itself, but also contributes to ensuring that children enjoy a range of other rights key for their survival, development and protection. It helps to ensure that a child has access to services at the appropriate age, including vaccinations and school enrolment, and enables the acquisition of identity documents. It facilitates family reunification in the event of displacement and separation due to natural disaster. Birth registration also contributes to reducing vulnerability. The proof of age afforded by a birth certificate offers a degree of protection to the child from a range of agerelated abuses including marriage below the legal age, hazardous and inappropriate forms of labour, child sexual exploitation, prosecution of a child as an adult and detention in adult facilities. It can also afford the child protection from identitybased abuses, notably trafficking, and - of particular importance in the context of the AIDS pandemic - reinforce a child’s inheritance rights. To the extent that aggregate registration data are made available to the national statistical office, birth registration is also a source of information necessary for good governance. It provides the government with data on demographic trends that support policy development and decision-making on how State resources should be allocated. There are no comprehensive national data on birth registration in Mozambique. However evidence suggests that registration levels are extremely low. In 2004, the National Institute of Statistics conducted a district level Demographic and Health Survey in five districts in five provinces. 82 The survey included information on birth registration and indicated that, on average, only 6 per cent of children under five years of age had a birth certificate. There was some variation across districts, from 3 per cent in Nhamatanda (Sofala province) and Nicoadala (Zambezia province) to 10 per cent in Xai-Xai (Gaza province). The main reason quoted by mothers for not registering their children was cost of registration (56 per cent), followed by distance to registration offices (14 per cent) and lack of knowledge about registration (13 per cent). A subsequent qualitative assessment undertaken in the two districts with the lowest levels of birth registration – Nicoadala and Nhamatanda – found that a lack of resources at registration offices was also a reason for low level of registration (Hughes, 2005). Many registration offices do not have the basic material for conducting birth registration activities, such as paper for printing certificates. More complete data will become available as a specific question on birth registration has been included by INE in the 2007 national population census questionnaire. 82 INE/UNICEF, Demographic and Health Survey in Five Districts, 2005. The survey was conducted from January to April 2004 among 2,764 households in the following districts: Nicoadala (Zambezia province), Changara (Tete province), Gondola (Manica province), Nhamatanda (Sofala province), and Xai-Xai (Gaza province). 200 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS
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CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE A S
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report on the
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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………
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4. Access to schooling and attendan
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TABLES AND FIGURES List of tables T
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Figure 4.20: Estimated spending on
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GBS GDP GER GNI GoM HAART HDI HIPC
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MAP OF MOZAMBIQUE Zumbu Magoe M
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een strongly positive in recent yea
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Child protection concerns Chapter F
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vaccination or malaria campaigns, w
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1. Objective of the Situation Analy
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Box 1.1: Human rights conventions r
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of poverty, defined as: “Impossib
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Table 1.1: Deprivation-based indica
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The Ministries of Planning and Deve
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34 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE:
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1. Introduction This chapter focuse
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Table 2.1: Progress towards the MDG
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3. Economic growth and macroeconomi
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Evidence as to what extent these
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The percentage of the population li
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Arndt et al. (2005) show that, on a
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B. Assessing childhood poverty In a
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Figure 2.9: Households living below
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severe deprivation. In the poorest
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The second PARPA for the period 200
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Box 2.3: Civil society engagement i
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A key cause of these weaknesses is
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One possible way forward in tacklin
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Box 2.4: Corruption and its impact
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(vi) Analysis of monitoring and rev
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There are two principal drivers beh
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This has troubling implications for
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70 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE:
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1. Introduction Every child has the
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B. Severe nutrition deprivation amo
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Zambezia and Tete provinces. Severe
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If this downward trend continues, M
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Figure 3.5: Percentage of women rec
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Mozambique has achieved a continual
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The second reason is that deaths oc
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5. Childhood illnesses A major publ
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Figure 3.9: Malaria prevention: use
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The 2005 Nutrition Survey conducted
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Box 3.3: Combating measles and poli
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(ii) Stunting prevalence (chronic m
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Alarmingly high levels of stunting
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Figure 3.16: Underweight prevalence
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There are 86 known salt producers r
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Among children, there were no varia
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Box 3.5: Infant feeding in the cont
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highly in PARPA II, which sets a ta
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Table 3.3: Overview of PMTCT progra
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The reduction of mother-to-child tr
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It is only recently that paediatric
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100 Figure 3.22: Use of safe water
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A. Inequitable access to and fundin
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The 2004/2005 IFTRAB survey also su
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provincial level reported that only
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Table 3.4: Ministry of Health budge
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Figure 3.29: Total sector resources
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Figure 3.31: Indicative per capita
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The agenda for expanding water supp
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and was revised in 2005. The on-bud
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supported by key sector stakeholder
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1. Introduction Education is a fund
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B. Severe information deprivation a
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Secondary education consists of fiv
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Table 4.3: Gross and net enrolment
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Table 4.4: Gross enrolment ratio, a
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57 per cent, compared with a NER of
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DHS data show that the wealth level
Page 149 and 150: Figure 4.11: Distribution of 11-yea
Page 151 and 152: Lack of literacy is directly correl
Page 153 and 154: In addition, there is a serious gap
Page 155 and 156: The IAF showed that in 2002/3 expen
Page 157 and 158: Absenteeism is also common among te
Page 159 and 160: to the need for two or even three s
Page 161 and 162: The system is faced with a number o
Page 163 and 164: • The school represents or is a l
Page 165 and 166: (iv) Impact of natural disasters In
Page 167 and 168: The associated large off-budget res
Page 169 and 170: The Ministry of Education and Cultu
Page 171 and 172: sense of providing education for ev
Page 173 and 174: 172 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE
Page 175 and 176: I. Introduction All children have t
Page 177 and 178: involving children. 45 per cent of
Page 179 and 180: Box 5.1: Street children in Maputo:
Page 181 and 182: Girls at greatest risk of abuse wer
Page 183 and 184: The aspirations expressed by the yo
Page 185 and 186: Against this background, Caia and C
Page 187 and 188: “Trafficking in women and childre
Page 189 and 190: Mozambique, girls aged 15-19 in the
Page 191 and 192: The survey indicates that 32 per ce
Page 193 and 194: Figure 5.5: School attendance among
Page 195 and 196: • Labour law does not define the
Page 197 and 198: - To use child labour (children age
Page 199: from their parents. Thus, the law d
Page 203 and 204: such as hospitals and schools for b
Page 205 and 206: Sofala province also accounts for t
Page 207 and 208: Evidence points to worrying increas
Page 209 and 210: Figure 5.9: Primary school attendan
Page 211 and 212: activities to strengthen the capaci
Page 213 and 214: The responsibility for implementing
Page 215 and 216: 214 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE
Page 217 and 218: Conclusions Mozambique is one of Af
Page 219 and 220: planning in Mozambique, and has the
Page 221 and 222: 7- Implementing social communicatio
Page 223 and 224: Form of Severe Deprivation Food Wat
Page 225 and 226: ANNEX II Calendar of the planning,
Page 227 and 228: ANNEX IV State Budget recurrent and
Page 229 and 230: REFERENCES AND MATERIALS CONSULTED
Page 231 and 232: Deaton, A., Ruiz-Castilo, J., and T
Page 233 and 234: Klasen, S. and Woltermann, S., ‘T
Page 235 and 236: Government of Mozambique, ‘Progra
Page 237 and 238: World Bank (WB), ‘World Developme
Page 239 and 240: World Bank (WB), ‘Mozambique Publ
Page 241 and 242: Ministry of Women and Co-ordination
Page 243: United Nations Children’s Fund (U
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Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

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