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Property stripping from children in the context of HIV and AIDS requires urgent intervention
Food and Agriculture Organisation for Southern and East Africa (FAOSAFR)
March 09, 2006

Property stripping from children in the context of HIV and AIDS constitutes a regional crisis that requires urgent intervention, concludes FAO Regional Workshop on HIV and AIDS, and Children’s Property Rights in Southern and East Africa

On the 7-8 March a National Workshop on HIV/AIDS, Children’s Property Rights and Livelihoods took place in Harare organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. Opening the workshop, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare in Zimbabwe drew attention to particularly vulnerable groups, orphans and other vulnerable children, noting that the HIV and AIDS pandemic is increasing their numbers and that they face increasing challenges around property stripping.

As a contribution to a Global Campaign on Children and AIDS launched by the UN in October 2005, the organisers of the Workshop, Sub-Regional Office of the Food and Agriculture Organisation for Southern and East Africa (FAOSAFR) supported by the UNICEF, the UNAIDS, Women Land Link Africa (WLLA) and OXFAM GB, brought participants from seven countries in southern and east Africa together to share their experiences and to examine and devise practical solutions to the enormous difficulties faced by children in the context of weak children’s rights, rising poverty levels and increasing HIV and AIDS infection. The participants included 9 children representatives from the region, some of who are HIV positive, testified on their experiences. A central focus of the workshop was the voices of children affected by property stripping and HIV and AIDS, often cruelly dispossessed of their properties and thus their livelihoods in the midst of bereavement.

The workshop recognised that many governments in the region have made laws intended to protect children but in many cases these laws are weak and can easily be violated. As the Master of the High Court in Zimbabwe Mr. Nyatanga emphasized, we need effective enforcement mechanisms to make these laws real in the lives of the most vulnerable groups. The Mater of the High Court was clear that there is a need to criminalise property stripping in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. Enforcement mechanisms are more than tougher sentencing and litigation but also the development of child-friendly tools that enable the rights holders to know and access the options they have. In addition, community mobilisation and education is a necessary for an effective grassroots response to protecting children and preventing property stripping from taking place.

Other outcomes of the workshop included the review of appropriate national policies, with sufficient funding and implemented across ministerial departments that address customs, practise and laws that disadvantage children in particular. Workshop discussions also drew attention to the fact that wills are infrequently made, leading to much confusion at death. The need to draw communities’ attention to the importance of these documents and how they themselves could draft a will was emphasised. Although much discussion was directed at efforts to empower children, workshop discussion was also directed at ways in which communities and potential perpetrators might come to better understand the particular difficulties and vulnerability of children.

The workshop concluded with participants agreeing to take forward the concrete proposals emanating from discussions with the appreciation that the increasingly disproportionate vulnerability of children in the face of widespread poverty, escalating HIV and AIDS infection rates and rising property stripping constitutes a regional crisis.

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