The latest wake-up call to this nation about existing laws, policies and systems to provide children with a safe, nurturing environment free from abuse, exploitation, harassment or neglect, took the form of an in-depth report in last week’s Sunday Guardian.
Data obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the Education Ministry revealed an alarming dropout rate in the system — approximately 151 primary school and 2,663 secondary school students between 2020 and last year.
Over 2,800 dropouts, disturbing as it is, should not have come as a complete surprise.
Last year, Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly had said since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2,000 primary and secondary school students had dropped out of the system.
The alarm was sounded at that point about the major gaps in the systems to ensure the rights and safety of T&T’s youngest citizens.
In a country that boasts of a Constitution guaranteeing education as a fundamental right and a responsibility of all citizens, with leaders and decision-makers who should be firmly committed to a modern, relevant and inclusive education system, the extent of this failure should have long triggered urgent reviews and interventions.
But that isn’t the only egregious shortcoming in matters pertaining to T&T’s children.
In the past year, the country was also confronted with the findings of the Judith Jones Report on the extent of abuse and neglect at children’s homes.
Even worse, as citizens struggled to process the findings of that committee, came the shocking reminder of another probe 24 years earlier by the Robert Sabga Task Force, which had already exposed the horrific treatment of wards of the state.
In the years between the probes by the Sabga and Jones teams — even with the implementation of a suite of child-focused laws, including the one that facilitated the establishment of the Children’s Authority —, the desired improvements have not been achieved.
The Judith Jones report was commissioned after an incident in mid-2021, when a group of teenagers ran away from abuse at a facility and two of them, Antonio Francis and Semion Danielm, both 15, were murdered in Laventille.
Since T&T is a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration and Convention on the Rights of the Child and local legislation has already been enacted enshrining those principles, the actions required at this point may not necessarily need to be legislative.
It is, however, time to take a close look at the enforcement of existing child laws, in addition to undertaking a comprehensive review of the systems and policies that govern children residing in this jurisdiction. The situation with migrant children, who are denied access to education, and the pending issue of 50-plus minors in Syria and Iraq who are scheduled to be repatriated, also requires careful examination.
The understaffed and overburdened Children’s Authority needs to be revisited. However, it goes much further than that.
While the Gender and Child Affairs Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister has the critical role of developing and implementing child-centred policies and programmes, space must be made for a range of institutions and professionals to do the critical work of closing gaps and introducing regimes that more effectively meet the needs of T&T’s children.
