Fighting Child Sexual Abuse in Zanzibar through Provision and Sharing of Child Protection Information

Abstract

This paper is based on a study that examined the provision of child protection information towards minimising child sexual abuse in Zanzibar. The paper provides a composite and updated picture of child protection initiatives and their challenges and proposes possible measures to be taken to enhance the situation, focusing on information provision and sharing. A survey was conducted in five local and two international organisations that deal with children’s affairs. It involved information workers, university instructors, university students, officers from the selected organisations and community members. In all, 128 respondents participated in the study. The results were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings show that information on child protection is available in both print and electronic formats in addition to being conventionally available and documented at the government ministries and other development partners official reports. However, the community’s access to this information remains very low, relies on radio and television, which most of the time provides limited information. This makes the majority of community members to remain only partially aware of issues pertaining to preventing, reporting and responding to child protection cases. Although governmental bodies are willing to support child protection, the limited co-ordination between governmental and non-state actors coupled with low direct involvement of the community has led to inefficient use of information as a tool to fighting child sexual abuse in Zanzibar.