Marking the 2023 Day of the African Child, the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection (MoGCSP), in collaboration with UNICEF, GES, CSA, PLAN Ghana, World Vision, and Action Aid, is sensitizing children on the need to protect themselves while online.
Day of the African Child (DAC) which is celebrated on June 16 every year seeks to pay tribute to the school children of Soweto, South Africa, who fought against racial segregation and mistreatment of black children in schools.
In a press statement from the (MoGCSP), the subject for the 2023 celebration is “The Rights of the Child in the Digital Environment”.
The ministry revealed that the choice of this theme is laid on the foundation to observe the significant impact of the digital age on how children exercise and realize their rights.
“They claimed that the digital world mediates children’s lives in ways that have an impact on how they can exercise their rights and how those rights may be strengthened or violated”, the ministry said.
The statement further added that, according to a recent study by the DOC, UNICEF, the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization, and other partners into child online practices in Ghana, while 7 out of 10 young people use the internet for learning, it is concerning that 4 out of 10 children and adolescents have contacted someone online they had never met in person and 2 out of 10 children and adolescents have met someone in person they first got to know on the internet.
It is also worth noting that almost 30% of kids and teenagers reported having an internet experience that irritated or offended them.
The ministry added that, despite the widely existing evidence that the internet has created excellent opportunities for the realization of children’s fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to education, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of association, among others, the above statistics and other problems like limited internet access, vulnerability to online sexual exploitation, children’s privacy issues, cyberbullying, as well as information gap in regard to the Cybersecurity Act 2020(Act 1038) have provided a peripheral but imminent danger to most children who patronize the digital environment hence the need to sensitize children and adolescents on the dangers of the digital environment.
Below is a list of activities lined up by the ministry
