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Members of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) have expressed their commitment to realizing an environment that ensures the safeguarding of minors and vulnerable adults in their respective Episcopal Sees.
Most African cultures have a harsh way of raising children and do not always distinguish between disciplining the younger members of society and child abuse, a Kenyan child Safeguarding official at the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar (JCAM) has said.
The upcoming General Assembly of the Association of Diocesan Priests (ADP) in Cameroon’s Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda is expected to examine issues relating to child safeguarding in the Central African nation, ADP official has told ACI Africa.
The Catholic Bishop of Kenya’s Malindi Diocese has called for child safeguarding amid initiatives undertaken by the Kenyan Diocese to ensure the safety of children.
The different cultures in Africa and how they have enabled and barred the safeguarding of children on the continent was the focus of the keynote speaker at last week’s conference of the Inter- Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA).
Catholic schools in South Sudan’s Wau Diocese are set to introduce the Child Safeguarding Policy this year, a move aimed at boosting the efforts of agencies concerned with protecting the rights of children in the Diocese.
A nation-wide coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ghana spearheaded by a church-based humanitarian institution has called on the Government of the West African nation to make the safeguarding of child rights a priority in 2021 and beyond ahead of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the convention of the rights of the child to be marked Friday, November 20.
A year after the inaugural global summit on the Protection of Minors in the Church that saw the Holy Father instruct Bishops’ conferences across the globe to review and strengthen child protection guidelines, the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) has been having a three-day meeting aimed at assessing the progress and impact of the policies in the various member countries.
At a three-day training on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults in the Church, the Archbishop at the helm of the Episcopal Conference of the Democratic Republic of Congo (CENCO) has called for justice that guarantees that the Church remains a “safe house of healing and renewal.”
Facilitators in the ongoing Plenary Assembly of the Bishops within the Southern Africa region of the continent have, over the last two days, guided the Church leaders drawn from six Bishops’ conferences across nine countries to deliberate on the need to ensure the safety of children within Church institutions and concrete steps towards care for God’s creation.
The need to have all members of society, and not just clergy and religious, become aware of and abide by the requirement that children are protected and safeguarded will be deliberated during planned 12th Plenary Assembly of the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA), one of the organizers of the five-day meeting set to start on November 13 has told ACI Africa.
At a recent meeting in Kenya’s capital Nairobi that brought together diocesan Coordinators of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) and Pontifical Missionary Children (PMC), the need to enhance the protection and safeguarding of children in the Church featured prominently, with the clergy and religious in attendance admitting cases of child abuse in their country and a Bishop calling on adherence to child safeguarding policies.