Caribbean has to do better for its children

ACCORDING to Dr. Julie Meeks-Gardner, Head of the Caribbean Child Development Centre based in Jamaica, the Caribbean is badly failing in achieving some of the UN recommendations with regards to overcoming violence against children.

Speaking during a lecture at the Grand Salle in Barbados, she reminded her audience of the 2006 UN Violence Against Children (UNVAC) world study, which included research undertaken by the Centre. The senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies Open Campus reported that the study showed that in the Caribbean, exposure to violence is very high and that there are critical gaps not in appropriate legislation, but in the implementation of those laws and enforcement.

The overall UN study produced 12 major and three overarching UN recommendations, which included strengthening local commitment to action; prohibiting all violence against children by law; and implementing systematic national data collection and research.

In terms of internal legal framework, she said seven countries have in place child care and protection acts, and this includes Barbados.

She then stated that in 2012, the UN asked the Centre to do follow-ups to see where the Caribbean countries have reached in achieving these goals, but lamented that the response to two of these recommendations “has been very poor”.

“We have not done very well across the region in terms of increasing our data collection efforts; however, there has been some improvement in strengthening national and local commitment and action.”

The Centre was asked to do the study for 16 countries but only received responses from 11. Of those 11, she said, “all need work” and require better implementation of the child protection legislation, especially in punishing the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, Dr. Meeks-Gardner noted that gangs and violence remain important issues for young people across the region, but large gaps still remain in the data available. She revealed that the Centre has recently put forward a proposal to do a study to get some of this information in place and will be terming it “Troublesome Youth Groups”, to get around the issues around defining gangs.

She also believes that some of the successful practices concerning reducing violence among and against children should be widely utilised in place of the many intervention programmes that are taking up resources, time, effort and space, but have no concrete results to show for their work.

“Some of these programmes need to be monitored and assessed carefully, because maybe we are focusing things in the wrong place or maybe something that is really great needs to be much bigger,” the professor of Child Development and Nutrition stated.

Also of note is her belief that a lack of male teachers is a major issue and has been flagged in some of the Centre’s programmes to find a way to overcome it.  (EL)