Governance and democracy: Working to help the invisible victims of a broken state
Child protection in the face of unique challenges: Working without the government’s involvement in Burkina Faso in practice.
How do you protect children when the state no longer can? Together with aid organisations and provincial authorities, GIZ is creating structures in Burkina Faso to better protect minors from violence and exploitation – a challenging assignment.
Terrorist groups control numerous regions of Burkina Faso – including Natiaboani in the east of the country. Having fled with his wife and children from his hometown to Fada, 45 kilometres away, Nundjoa barely provides for his family by taking on any job imaginable. One day, he discovers that his thirteen-year-old daughter Bouama is secretly selling the family’s scarce food supplies to strangers for less than they are worth. An already tense situation quickly escalates. Beside himself with disappointment and despair, Nundjoa wants to kill Bouama. He doesn’t care whether he goes to prison for it.
Functioning structures against child labour, forced marriage, rape
By no means untypical, the case above exemplifies the spiral of violence towards a child in a displacement and crisis situation. When societies break down, minors are disproportionately often the victims of violence. Burkina Faso was already one of the poorest countries in the world before the two military coups of 2022. It is the country with the greatest exploitation of children in gold mines and on cotton plantations, with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and with the greatest incidence of female genital mutilation. Today, it has over one million displaced children. Child trafficking is on the rise. Terrorist groups recruit girls and boys as soldiers. Young people scarcely have a functioning state they can turn to anymore.
Nevertheless, not everyone is alone in their plight. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has set up, together with local and international partners, functioning child protection units in 18 locations around the country. In total, 90 members of these units were trained to detect violence against children and either de-escalate cases directly or hand them over to the local authorities. Also included are respected representatives of local communities who local people confide in, such as imams or head teachers. So far, these units have identified and dealt with 24 difficult cases of violence, including domestic violence, severe child labour, forced marriage and rape. The units also do preventive work and have raised awareness among more than 10,000 adults, young people and children. They show possible solutions and provide information about children’s rights.
Decentralised structures are best in times of crisis
Imam Ouedraogo Saïdou heads a child protection unit in Limanya in the southwest of the country: ‘We have seen a lot of changes for the better as a result,’ he reports. ‘We have been able to reunite with their families many children who had been lost during the forced displacement.’ In both provinces where the project is active, the number of children attending school has also recently started to rise again.
GIZ/N. Seiler
Mathias Gritzka heads the Child protection project for GIZ. ‘In a situation like this, decentralised state and civil society structures are more important than ever for the protection of children,’ he explains. The child protection units now work closely with social services at local and provincial level, and these in turn with the police authorities, the gendarmerie and the judiciary where possible.
In Nundjoa’s case, these structures prevented a tragedy before it was too late. Alerted by neighbours about the crazed father, the child protection unit immediately informed the local social services. Their staff were able to make Nundjoa see how destructive violence against his child was. They settled the dispute and organised food and some money to alleviate the family’s existential hardship.
Working with scarce government involvement: difficult, dangerous, dedicated
GIZ had initiated the project back when the country had a democratically elected government. At present, it continues to run it with little government involvement. Although the relevant ministries in Burkina Faso have been informed, GIZ works exclusively with local and provincial authorities and non-governmental organisations such as Terre des Hommes and Save the Children.
Together, the partners are currently working to improve the training of social work students, strengthen participation in child protection planning processes, train multipliers in schools on the safe use of the internet and leverage the Sport for Development initiative as a means to improve the future prospects of children.
