Justice for Every Child: Let’s Make Everyday The Day Of The African Child

By Bhuwan Ribhu, Global child rights activist and lawyer.

Nearly 50 years ago, hundreds of school children in Soweto were gunned down by a racist regime that murdered children to protect the huge inequality in South African education.

It was deeply tragic and sadly only one of the many massacres during the long colonial period that young Africans endured.

As we commemorate their brave sacrifice today, we must be honest about the challenges African children still face and confront an uncomfortable truth. Basic health, education, and protection continue to be denied to children in Africa.

The global community is failing Africa’s children. And in doing so, it is failing itself. We must come together with stronger resolve, decisive action, and a shared sense of accountability to close the widening gap between children in Africa and the rest of the world.

Since 2010, the number of children out of school in Africa has increased by 23 million. Last week, new global estimates from the International Labour Organization revealed that child labour in Africa has risen to 94 million, the highest ever recorded.

This is not a reflection of global progress. It is a reflection of global neglect. While child labour has declined in other parts of the world, Africa now carries the cost of global inaction. In 2000, one in four of the world’s child labourers were African. Today, it is more than two in three. This is what injustice looks like. And it is being normalised in plain sight.

Children are coerced into labour because they are the easiest to exploit. They are forced to work not by choice but because they lack alternatives, within a system built to profit from their vulnerability. Child labour fuels an exploitative economy and denies children their right to education, health, and development. It pushes them deeper into cycles of violence and vulnerability. Any process that results in exploitation is trafficking. With children in situations of trafficking being treated like slaves, sexual abuse and exploitation has become a part of their reality. It is a grim truth that millions face, and many pay with their lives.

The data on child trafficking in Africa remains sparse, and that absence of evidence is part of the problem. But what we do know is enough.

If we are to truly look at the scale of loss with open eyes, the numbers are heartbreaking. More African children under the age of five have died unnecessarily in the first quarter of this century from extreme poverty and systemic child rights violations than all the world’s military deaths in World War One and World War Two combined.

This is not a development gap. It is a collapsing foundation. What children across Africa are facing is a deepening polycrisis, marked by the absence of basic health care, education, protection, and social safety nets. These fundamental rights are further eroded by climate emergencies, conflict, displacement, and deeply rooted harmful practices.

When children are denied the most essential conditions for survival and growth, they are not simply left behind. They are pushed into the path of exploitation. Vulnerability is not passive. It is produced through neglect and then weaponised by organised criminal networks.

When we look away, impunity steps in. Traffickers, exploiters, and abusers target children in the absence of legal deterrence. Girls are forced into marriage as poverty deepens. Cases of sexual violence rise in silence. What begins as a crisis of hunger and deprivation turns quickly into a crisis of rape, trafficking, and lifelong harm.

This is not the failure of a few systems. It is the collapse of a collective promise to children. And the longer we delay justice, the deeper this crisis will grow.

The world is far richer today. Global GDP per person has increased by over 50 percent since the year 2000 and is now at its highest point in history. We must ask ourselves what the purpose of this wealth truly is. If injustice continues to grow and inequality deepens, what future are we building? When global aid turns inward, is it only to prepare for war or to serve narrow self-interest?

Wealth without justice serves no one. The only meaningful purpose of global prosperity is to secure sustainable development for all people and for the planet, not just for a privileged few. If we do not protect all our children now, nothing else we do will matter. Justice cannot be reserved for one part of the world while the suffering of children in Africa is ignored.

There is a need for a deeper understanding of the international causes of extreme child poverty in Africa. The world’s incredibly unequal response to the pandemic excluded Africa from the global safety net and directly contributed to enveloping Africa’s debt crisis.

Over two billion dollars a week is now leaving Africa for rich countries in debt repayments. In some countries debt repayments are half of all government revenue, leaving little to nothing left for social protection.

Even better off African countries have seen a spike in child malnutrition. The number of Kenyans who are undernourished has gone up by 10 million in the last decade. And Kenya is not the worst affected country.

Two more factors are amplifying this collapse: the increase in tax injustice and the decrease in aid, which, unless major action is taken, risk an even worse decline in children’s rights in Africa.

Despite an increase of around a third of a trillion US dollars in Africa resources entering the global economy since the start of the SDGs in 2015, so much of the profit has been moved offshore that GDP per person in Africa has actually fallen in the same time, and over 100 million more Africans have become malnourished.

There has been a huge increase in Africa’s share of people living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than three dollars a day. In 2000, less than one fifth (19 percent) of the world’s extremely poor lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Today, over two thirds (72 percent) of the world’s extremely poor do. Yet less than one fifth of global bilateral aid goes to sub-Saharan Africa.

This is not a funding oversight but is tantamount to aid discrimination. At a time when debt repayments and profit extraction are draining Africa’s economies, the recent aid cuts announced by both the United States and the United Kingdom will push the continent further into crisis. The share of global resources flowing into Africa is set to fall even lower.

This is a systemic and systematic imbalance. And it is children who are paying the price.

Global aid fatigue in rich countries, which greatly overestimate the aid they give and underestimate the wealth they take and shifting funding priorities towards inward-looking agendas are sidelining the true essence of humanity and sustainable development. This needs to change. Justice for every child demands that the world redistributes not only its wealth but also its will to act.

To address this crisis, we must prioritise, strengthen, sustain, and scale every child’s access to education, essential services, and justice.

Investment in the rule of law, and in strengthening accountable government institutions and civil society, is the cornerstone of this response. This must be grounded in child protection frameworks that prioritise prevention before protection, protection before prosecution, and prosecution that reinforces protection.

Placing children at the centre of every response requires deep and sustained partnership among communities, civil society, governments, law enforcement agencies, and the judiciary. Justice must not be an afterthought. It must be the foundation that shields every child from harm and holds every system accountable.

We need every federal government supported by global aid to invest in what already exists. This begins with mapping and strengthening existing institutions, building the capacity of frontline systems, and scaling up models that work.

Despite economic challenges, African governments can and must prioritise funding for child protection services. At the upcoming Financing for Development Conference, rich countries must be made to face up to their responsibility for the huge increase in inequality between the world’s children. The cost of doing nothing is real and they must pay the price for lost childhoods.

African leaders must carry the voices and concerns of their children to the global stage with strength and clarity. They must refuse to pay the price for a debt crisis caused by global systems that excluded Africa during the pandemic and continue to exploit it today.

Waiting for the benevolence of others will not deliver justice. Rights must be realised with urgency and accountability. The time to act is now. Let us make every day the Day of the African Child.