AMECEA: Safeguarding Desk Unveils 2023 -2025 Safeguarding Priorities
Pastoral coordinators in a meeting in Addis Ababa,
Guided by the motto ‘safeguarding is our collective responsibility, AMECEA has renewed her commitment to nurturing a safe church for all children and vulnerable by highlighting her priorities for the next three-year phase.
Sharing a rationale for the continued zeal with Pastoral coordinators in a meeting in Addis Ababa, the Regional Safeguarding Advisor, George Thuku highlighted the context within which the programme had been developed. He noted that children formed a significant proportion of the entire population in the region. He shared that though efforts had been made to safeguard all children, the region still faced high incidences of multiple forms of child abuse including physical, sexual, emotional, neglect, exploitation and other forms. To illustrate this, the officer cited examples from various reports by UNICEF titled Violence Against Children (VAC), which indicated high levels of prevalence of various forms of abuse in Kenya, 53%, Uganda 50%, Zambia 53%). In the light of the above scenario, there is always the question of how faith communities have responded to the challenge. AMECEA appreciates that there is need to strengthen safeguarding structures in the AMECEA region, as well as address gaps in the capacity of the various actors to fully address issues of safeguarding: Additionally, the programme aims to improve coordination of safeguarding initiatives in various commissions and projects in the conferences (education, Pastoral, CJPC, Caritas, Health, PMS/PMC).
Highlighting the areas of focus, the officer reported that the programme will focus on strengthening formation of priestly candidates by working with a total of 26 major seminaries directly reaching to 26 formators and over 260 seminarians. Further, AMECEA safeguarding office will work directly with safeguarding officers and senior management of the 8 member conferences to strengthen implementa
tion of policies and standards for safeguarding. In a special way, he recognized the effort by Sudan and South Sudan in the development of their national policy. He pledged to support the capacity improvement and implementation of the policy on the conference.
The meeting which was addressed by the Bishop chairman of Pastoral Department, Right Reverend Rogath Kimaryo (Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Same, Tanzania), AMECEA Pastoral Department Coordinator (Fr Emmanuel Chimombo) and attended by Coordinators from 7 member conferences reaffirmed the commitment to support and collaborate with National Safeguarding Officers in the implementation of 7 point resolutions on safeguarding made by the Bishops of the region during their plenary assembly held in July 2022, in Tanzania.
