CHILDREN’S SUMMIT AMPLIFIES THEIR VOICES GLOBALLY, SAYS MINISTER TOLASHE

• The Africa Children’s Summit 2025, like the G20 Summit, is amplifying the voices of Africa to the world.
• Officially opening the summit in Johannesburg on 5 April 2925, Minister of Social Development Sisisi Tolashe noted that the first legally binding international convention democratic South Africa signed was the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• She also noted that world leaders had not kept to the undertakings committed to when ratifying these international legal documents. If they had, the discussions at the Africa Children’s Summit would be very different.

As South Africa presides over G20 activities during 2025, the country is using the opportunity to bring developmental priorities of the African continent and the global south more firmly into the agenda of the G20 – and the Africa Children’s Summit taking place in Johannesburg right now is doing the same.

Officially opening the Africa Children’s Summit 2025 on 5 April 2025, the Minister of Social Development Sisisi Tolashe said the summit, hosted by the Department of Social Development and in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, was the best way to amplify the collective voices of Africa’s children, as well as way to honour Madiba’s life and legacy.

The biennial summit, held under the theme ‘Seen, heard and engaged in education’, takes place at St John’s College from 4 – 7 April 2025.

“It is worth mentioning that the South African government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the first legally binding international convention to confirm the human rights of all children across the globe.”

Global conventions

The Convention on Rights of the Child sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children and was the first international convention that the newly-elected democratic government of South Africa ratified on 16 June 1996 – a day that recalls the Soweto Uprising in 1976.

Five years later, the country ratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, a broad regional instrument that sets out rights for children in Africa, commonly known as the African Children’s Charter.

“Since ratifying both the Convention on Rights of the Child and the African Children’s Charter, and guided by our Constitution, especially Section 28 of the Bill of Rights, South Africa has focused on realising children’s rights and fulfilling our obligations,” the minister said, adding that central to both charters is the principle that governments must always act in the best interests of the child and that every child has basic fundamental right.

“It is worth noting that world leaders have not kept to the undertakings committed to when ratifying these international legal documents. If we did, your topics for this forum would have been different,” she told the summit delegates.

Child-centred dialogue

The summit’s objectives are to promote child-centred dialogue and advocacy, empower children as agents of change, ensure inclusive and equitable participation, provide evidence-based policy recommendations, strengthen collaboration across sectors and regions on the continent, review and advance progress, and raise awareness and mobilise for national and regional action.

“Child participation is a fundamental right of children through which their other rights can be realised,” Tolashe said, adding that the obligations on society through the state to protect, respect and promote the right of children to participate in decisions that affect them are promoted by both the Charter on the Right of the Child and the African Children’s Charter.

The child-led Africa Children’s Summit, which aims to amplify the voices of children in policymaking and decision-making processes across the continent, is also aligned to the AU Agenda 2040, and the recent Bogotá 2024 Global Commitment to Ending Violence Against Children.

Nothing about us, without us

Following the inaugural summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2023, the second Africa Children’s Summit is a landmark gathering aimed at championing child participation and shaping the future trajectory of the African continent with inputs from her children. This child-led summit emphasises the importance of children’s agency under the saying: “Nothing about us without us”.

Minister Tolashe noted that the summit must create a platform to agitate for accelerated action needed to realise the full enjoyment of the human rights and freedoms of all children on the African continent.

“Because it is led by you, children, it gives you a collective voice to share your views and hold African leaders and governments to account on key issues affecting you.

“These include democracy, emerging technologies, and climate change, promoting inclusive education for all children, the role of artificial intelligence in education, addressing school violence, gender-based violence and violence against children, amongst others.”

The programme will feature a dynamic and inclusive structure designed to maximise engagement, encourage meaningful participation, and foster intergenerational dialogue.

The structure includes a blend of plenaries, panels, workshops, exhibitions, and cultural events, with hybrid components to enhance accessibility.

According to the UNICEF’s Children’s report of November 2024, high-income countries in the world will count for a small share of children by the year 2050, and Africa will be the one with a high number of children. What this means then, is that Africa will be able to gain on the demographic dividend.

Designing a future children deserve

“We have to ensure and encourage that these are led by you, the children, wherein you amplify your voice as the future of this world and hold us in government, private sector and civil society all accountable. We must be held accountable by you to ensure that the policies and laws we enact are in line with what you will be adopting so as to guarantee the future you deserve,” Minister Tolashe said.

None of this would be achieved if the children of Africa still face:

• The impact of climate change, where children in sub-Saharan Africa are at heightened risk in a rapidly changing world affected by extreme climate change crises, shifting population dynamics, and widening technological gaps.

The challenges facing children in Africa are overwhelming. Millions lack access to quality education, are forced into child labour, live in conflict zones, or face early forced marriage and exploitation.

Illiteracy and the lack of quality education is the main reason why Africa wallows in poverty and in despair despite the abundance of both human and natural resources.

• Poverty sees 25 000 children in Africa die each day. According to UNICEF, 27% to 28% of all children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to be underweight or stunted.

Many children die each day due to lack of basic sanitation, clean water, adequate shelter, and generally poor living conditions due to poverty.

Millions of parents in Africa must cope daily with the fact that their offspring may not survive the first critical years of life, in many cases, the diseases that threaten their children’s lives are preventable.

• Being a refugee on their own continent. Of the 50 million refugees and displaced people in the world, approximately half are children.

War is the primary factor in the creation of child refugees. It is also a principal cause of child death, injury, and loss of parents. In the last decade, war has killed more than 2 million children, wounded another 6 million, and orphaned about 1 million.

Children also flee their homes because they fear various forms of abuse such as rape, sexual slavery, and child labour. Circumstances of birth also play a role in depriving children of a legal home.

• Lack of access to education. A good education is important to improve the lives of African children. But due to lack of financial resources many children in Africa cannot afford to go to school.

It is said that more than 100 million children do not have access to school, and of the children who enrol in primary school, over 100 million drop out because of their parents’ inability to pay school levies. These figures are not surprising considering the fact that a large portion of the African population has people who live below the poverty line.

• The effect of child abuse and neglect. The prevalence of child abuse and neglect in Africa is widespread.

Child abuse entails the physical, sexual, and emotional mistreatment of a child that causes long-term or permanent damage.

Neglect is an act of omission, or the absence of action, the consequences of which can be devastating to a child, as it leaves no visible marks and yet happens to be the most dangerous.

Both usually involve infants and very young children who cannot speak or defend themselves.

• Lack of health care and healthcare facilities has contributed immensely to child mortality.
• Human trafficking and slavery. Trafficking is the fastest-growing means by which people are forced into slavery and is a booming industry that affects every continent.

According to UNICEF, over 200 000 children work as slaves in west and central Africa. Boys are usually sold to work on cotton and cocoa plantations while girls are used as domestic servants and sex workers. In some cases, children are kidnapped outright and sold into slavery whilst other families sell their children, mostly girls, for as little as $14.

• Child labour sees an estimated 211 million children between the ages of five and 14 put to work, with a large number in Africa.

According to the International Labour Organisation some of these children work full time to support their impoverished families.

Minister Tolashe told the delegates: “The Importance of the Africa Children’s Summit and the topical issues to be discussed here cannot be overemphasised.”

She noted the shocking revelations currently emerging in the Joslin Smith’s case to the mind-numbing brutal rapes that children experience.

“This act of sparing no effort to speedily ensure that the perpetrators of rape are brought to book to face the full might of the law is encouraging.”

Ensuring children are protected

South Africa needs to ensure that children are supported and protected in all gender-based violence matters and violence against children, she added.

“The sad reality we need to confront head-on, as shown year in and year out by the quarterly crime statistics all over the world, is that more and more children are likely to be abused at home and in the hands of someone they know – those  who have a duty to care and protect them and that is why we welcomed the recent announcement by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development to publicise the list of convicted gender-based violence perpetrators and names of sexual offenders contained in the National Register for Sex Offenders.”

As the Department of Social Development, “we intend to scale up prevention and early intervention such as RISIHA, which seeks to support community-based efforts to develop, enhance and coordinate initiatives and activities to prevent child abuse, neglect and exploitation”. The focus is on strengthening families and communities as the first line of response in care and prevention.

Listening, hearing and engaging

Key to these interventions is the need to promote child participation by listening, hearing and engaging the voices of the children, as recommended of both the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child during the presentation of South Africa’s periodic report.

“One way in which we do this is through the annual Nelson Mandela Children’s Parliament, a collaborative effort between the Department of Social Development, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, UNICEF, Save the Children SA, the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures,” Tolashe noted.

Expressing her appreciation to the local organising committee for working around the clock to ensure the success of this important gathering of Africa’s children on South African soil, Minister Tolashe said: “We believe that the second biennial Africa Children’s Summit will complement ongoing national and regional efforts to leverage the momentum of the Nairobi Summit and accelerate the implementation of the ‘’Africa We Want’’ and the 2030 Agenda to ensure that we leave no child behind.”