Spotlight Initiative has reported how two Madzicuera Secondary Schoolteachers, Flora Senguaio and Eugénio Francisco, work with their students to eliminate violence at school and to prevent students from dropping out due to child marriage in Mozambique.
Development Diaries report that the United Nations initiative supported the establishment of a multi-sectoral mechanism for the prevention, reporting, referral and response to violence against children in schools in the country.
It is understood that through the initiative, child-friendly information on the prevention of child marriage has been shared among school communities, reaching around 5,000 students.
In Mozambique, an estimated 2.4 million children, adolescents and young people are out of school, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Mozambique has the second-highest rate of child marriage in the subregion of eastern and southern Africa and one of the highest rates worldwide, affecting roughly one in every two girls, data from the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) shows.
Child marriage in the country is driven by poverty, harmful practices, education, and adolescent pregnancy.
‘We explain to our students that violence is not normal and that dialogue is the best form of conflict resolution’, Spotlight Initiative quoted Senguaio as saying.
‘We also talk about the existing mechanisms for anonymous reporting to institutions such as the police and IPAJ, which can support them in resolving violence cases or child marriages’.
As for Francisco, he has been informing students about gender-based violence, positive masculinities and the law against child marriage.
‘The number of school dropouts has decreased significantly in recent times, due largely to the reduction in child marriage’, he is quoted as saying.
‘Children and adolescents understand the value of school and know what violence means; they also take this knowledge back home. Then, in parallel, there is coordinated work for the prevention and fight against child marriage and the response to violence in general’.
The project appears to be recording impressive outcomes as Senguaio noted that due to her talks and awareness-raising activities, her students, especially girls, now have the courage to report violence and child marriage and to take action through the response and resolution mechanisms.
There is a critical need to increase community knowledge of the incidence of abuse and violence as well as to give communities, families, and children the tools they need to report and resolve such violations.
Photo source: UNDP Mozambique/Mateus Fotine
