Tanzania: Progress of children's rights on track

By Lydia Shekighenda

The government has made remarkable progress in protecting the rights and well-being of children by providing quality health services and free education, it was revealed.

The Minister of Health, Community Development, Gender, Seniors and Children, Ummy Mwalimu, said on Tuesday during the celebration of World Child Day that the government had taken various measures to ensure respect for children's right to life and education. She added that the government continued to improve maternal and child health services in its hospitals, health centers and clinics in order to reduce child mortality.

Minister Mwalimu said the government, in collaboration with other stakeholders, had reduced the number of deaths of children under one year from 99 in 1,000 live births to 43 in 1,000 births alive.

"There is a 50% reduction in the number of deaths … the government is also working on other interventions so that this number can further decrease … we have also reduced the number deaths under five from 147 to 67 per 1000 live births, "she noted.

The minister noted, however, that the government is still grappling with the problem of neonatal mortality, although it has already begun to take steps to address this problem, for example by setting up neonatal by improving the provision of their services.

With regard to education, she said, the free education policy offers children and girls the opportunity to access education. According to her, according to 2015 statistics, the number of children enrolled in nursery schools rose to 1,069,000, but this number increased to 1,052,000 in 2016, while primary level, the number of children enrolled in 2015 was 1.5 million. more than 2 million after the introduction of free education.

She stressed that it was crucial to invest in children, who represent 51% of the total population, while the country is striving to achieve the status of economy of intermediate income.

Ms. Mwalimu also explained that last year's statistics indicated 26.7 million children in the country, which equals 50.8% of all Tanzanians, while the National Bureau of Statistics predicts that the population of children will increase to 29.2 million by 2020 if the population growth rate will be 2.7 to 3 percent.

Ms. Maniza Zaman, a representative of the United Nations Children's Fund and International Children's Fund (UNICEF), said the day was important for the world to come together to celebrate children. She said Tanzania had a lot to celebrate since the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"We now have fewer children dying, fewer babies contracting HIV, a steady decrease in malnutrition in recent years and more children having access to school." She noted, however, that the Tanzanian child population was growing rapidly and was expected to double by 2030, adding that, given the economic and social diversity, regional disparities between men and women and social inequalities, the country still struggled to respect the rights of the child as set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

She said that everyone's role in society is to protect the rights of children. Students from different schools and higher education institutions, including the Universities of the University of Dar es Salaam, Chang 'Ombe and Azania, attended the event .