Plan : 16 June: International Day of the African Child

Created by the Organisation of African Unity in 1991, International Day of the African Child is an annual event which commemorates the massacre of children in Soweto in 1976 by the apartheid regime in South Africa. Thousands of black school children had marched in the street demanding their rights

Children’s rights are legitimate. They should be known and recognised, by children, parents, governments... This website, launched on International Day of the African Child, has as its objective to make child rights better known, letting those most affected speak : children themselves.

The United Nations Convention relative to Rights of the Child (1989) recognises children’s rights in four different areas :

The right to life and survival
The right to develop
The right to be protected
The right to participate

You can read the Convention relative to Rights of the Child and listen to a radio sketch dedicated to this.

In addition, in 1994, the African Movement of Working Children and Youth (MAEJT) defined 12 priority rights to fight against exploitation and bad working conditions of children and established a programme of activities to promote these rights.

These rights also inspired the African Charter of Rights and Welfare of the Child adopted by the Organisation of African Unity.

This year the Day concentrates on the right to participate

Participation by children is important because it increases their self-confidence, their place within the family, their leadership skills and their optimism, as well as their personal security. It also helps to strengthen their capacity to communicate and collaborate with others and to develop a sense of solidarity and mutual support with their peers.

The regional promotional campaign for children’s rights through the radio "I am a child but I have my rights too !" and the Kids Waves project radio programmes, produced by Plan, are good examples of promoting children’s right to participate. One of the radio sketches is dedicated to this particular question.

Until now, thousands of children have been trained to host weekly radio shows and comunicate child rights (education, health, protection, free time etc.…) in eleven (11) countries in West Africa.

You can listen to these radio sketches made by and for children from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. Through their different stories, they deal with children’s right to participate, as well as other child rights.

This website invites you to discover these rights thanks to the use of different media, made by and for children in West Africa….