Stella Nkrumah-Ababio - West Africa Region Child Protection Advisor, World Vision - DFID Girl Summit 2014

Panel Discussion: "Spotlight on Progress - Prevention and Safeguarding: Protecting Those at Risk"

In this video presention, Stella Nkrumah-Ababio describes how empowering children to create bylaws on issues such as early marriage can result in community bylaws enacted and enforced by local chiefs, preventing early marriage and girls leaving school.

Context: This presentation is from one of the 14 "Spotlights on Progress" video-recorded sessions from the Girl Summit 2014, London, United Kingdom (UK). The sessions were organised to share best practice between practitioners, grassroots activists, and government ministers across the issues of female genital mutilation (FGM) and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM). Girl Summit is a project of the Department for International Development (DFID), UK.

A featured panelist of this Spotlight session was Stella Nkrumah-Ababio, West Africa Region Child Protection Advisor, World Vision.

Profile of speaker: Stella Nkrumah-Ababio is World Vision West Africa’s Regional Child Protection and Child Focus Advisor, West Africa, based in Sierra Leone. In 2011, World Vision Sierra Leone began their programme Empowering Communities for Increased Protection of Children. Nkrumah-Ababio speaks about how children are leading on the issues of FGM and CEFM. By way of example, she opened her presentation with a video on a children's council that approached two chiefs, within the chiefdoms where they lived, to ask them to establish community bylaws on CEFM. Teachers supported the children in formulating the bylaws. In 2013, the bylaws were made official in the presence of parents and children. Nkrumah-Ababio then introduced the two people who had brought the video to her attention, both attendees of the Girl Summit.

Strategy overview: The goal of this DFID-funded effort is "to empower communities to increase protection of their most vulnerable children. Using a child- and community-centred child protection assessment tool, children and communities identified and prioritised issues of teenage pregnancy, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and [CEFM]. The project was based on these priorities, understanding root causes, and identifying gaps and opportunities in formal and informal child protection systems. Children’s involvement, through children’s clubs, has been an important aspect of the project. As a direct result of advocacy from the children’s clubs, chiefdom by-laws have been introduced prohibiting parents & guardians from arranging child, early and forced marriage for their children and subjecting them to FGM/C below 18 years of age. The work has also drawn on community facilitative processes to sensitize and mobilise religious leaders to use their role in communities to tackle child protection issues. Early indications of impact note an increase in the number of girls and boys who report living free from violence, abuse and exploitation over the past year."

In support of the community bylaw project viewed in the opening video, "[t]he by-laws and associated fines resulted in cutters' [those who carry out the FGM cutting process - often women filling a traditional role of service] involvement in Mothers’ clubs who reported there had been no cases of FGM/C in the past year and that girl’s attendance at the school had increased. More chiefs have since publicly denounced FGM/C." Nkrumah-Ababio cites evidence of the effectiveness of bylaws: fines for husbands seeking early marriage and parents seeking CEFM contracts for their underage daughters; principals of schools reporting no girls dropping out for early marriage; mothers' reports of no girls joining the society that prepares them for FGM; and chiefs denouncing FGM and enforcing fines.

Lessons from the Sierra Leone project include:
 

1. Encourage traditional leaders to have a seat in Parliament in order to add power to their ability to enforce bylaws;
2. Introduce Mothers’ Clubs for mothers and children to help formulate and monitor use of bylaws;
3. Ensure community ownership and adherence by legislating through community-created bylaws;
4. Create peer-to-peer learning and influence - critical for both traditional leaders and Mothers’ Clubs; and
5. Mobilise commitments from as many traditional leaders as possible to lobby the natinoal parliament to pass legislation to ban FGM.

Through checking in with child contacts both in Sierra Leone and in Nepal, where similar work is being done on CEFM, the project can monitor progress for the next two years of its span.

From the One Year On report assembled in 2015 to check in on progress on national and organisational commitments, World Vision reported the following: "World Vision is delivering our Girl Summit commitments on many fronts including: Partnering with 1) Promundo in India, we successfully piloted the innovative ‘men care’ approach to challenge men on CEFM. With Islamic Relief we are rolling out ‘Channels of Hope’ to catalyse faith community action against CEFM and FGM/C. At the 2015 UN Commission on Status of Women, we put "girls at the centre" highlighting CEFM and FGM/C, with DfID, Plan UK and others. 2) We reviewed how many children in our longterm programmes have birth certificates and are promoting increased birth registration. Particularly in West Africa and India we are increasing Life Skills training to encourage gender equality, self-protection and advocacy against CEFM and FGM/C. Our new framework to prevent, mitigate and respond to gender-based violence in emergencies targets CEFM and FGM/C. In East Africa and Nepal, we are researching how effectively our child protection programmes address CEFM and FGM/C."

Overview of this Summit Session: From the Girl Summit summary document: "This spotlight explores what can be done to safeguard girls who are at risk of child, early and forced marriage or FGM, or who have already undergone one of these practices. Focusing on the roles that both communities and agencies can play, it showcases examples of programmes, tools and partnerships which can be used to help protect girls in a range of different contexts.

The session is opened by Marta Santos Pais UN Special Representative for the Secretary General on Violence against Children.

The speakers, in order of appearance, are:
Stella Nkrumah-Ababio, West Africa Region Child Protection Advisor, World Vision - Child protection initiatives, Sierra Leone, with insights from Nepal
Dr Emma McLaren, Joint Head, Forced Marriage Unit, Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office - The Forced Marriage Unit, Government of the United Kingdom
Anne-Marie Hutchinson, OBE Partner, Dawson Cornwell - Force Marriage Civil Protection Orders, UK
Nafissatou  Diop Co-ordinator, UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on FGM/C - Service delivery for prevention, protection and response to FGM, Africa
Keith Niven, Detective Chief Superintendent, Metropolitan Police, London - Operation Limelight/Community Engagement FGM Conference, UK

The session is moderated by Ikenna Azuike, the founder of What's Up Africa, a provocative, entertaining internet programme about African news, initiatives and people."

Footage of this (available below) and other "Spotlights" are available on DFID’s YouTube channel.

The Girl Summit is a project of DFID. Click here and scroll down to see the full list of committed individuals and organisations working on girls' issues, as well as a list of Girl Summit Charter signatories.