Please Don't Dump Babies - Gov't
02 March 2009
New Era
By: Wezi Tjaronda
WINDHOEK – Concerned with the increasing rate at which young mothers are dumping babies, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare has made an impassioned plea to mothers not to throw away their children.
Baby dumping means rejecting and throwing away a baby immediately after birth, exposing it to danger and death.While some babies are found alive, many are not fortunate. They are found dead after being buried alive or having been suffocated in plastic bags.
“Do not kill the babies,” said the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Sirkka Ausiku on Thursday.
She said the trend seems to be increasing at a time when the ministry has embarked on a campaign to discourage young mothers from throwing their newborn babies away.
Apart from guaranteeing the right to life for all Namibia’s citizens, the Constitution also says children shall have the right to a name, to acquire a nationality and be cared for by parents.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Namibia is a signatory, encourages countries to ensure that “every child has the inherent right to life and also to ensure the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child”.
The ministry has embarked on a campaign to encourage young mothers to drop their babies at police stations, churches, schools and with community leaders or people they trust for them to refer the babies to the ministry.
“We have the means and the capacity to look after the children and to provide counselling to the mother to take back the child later,” she said.
Last year, the Legal Assistance Centre in a monograph authored by Dianne Hubbard on Baby Dumping, recommended the creation of safe havens for the deposit and care of unwanted babies as one way of preventing baby dumping and infanticide.
This will however require making amendments to the country’s legal framework to ensure that parents who leave their infants at designated places such as hospitals are not prosecuted for child abandonment.
The problem is not reflected in statistics, but the number of babies flushed down the toilet systems that end up at the sewerage works show that this is a serious problem. In 2007, the police recorded more than 20 cases of concealment of birth.
However, Ausiku said the ministry would rather have the young mothers take their children to places and people they know and trust instead of having a fixed place to deposit the babies.
An abandoned child can be placed in a place of safety, which can either be an institution, family member or any suitable individual, by a police, probation officer or social worker. The child can also be placed under foster care or can be adopted.
Reasons given for baby dumping include the fear of rejection by their parents and partners, lack of knowledge on foster care and adoption, fear of HIV positive women that their children will be infected and die and also the fear of leaving school.
Ausiku urged people at family and community level to provide the assistance needed for young pregnant women to cope with their pregnancies and their newborn babies.
“These girls are sometimes looked at as outcasts. As much as they do things that make us sad, we must help them,” she added.
A leaflet produced by the ministry on baby dumping says the problems can be avoided by abstaining from sex and concentrating on own personal development, stopping the sugar daddy syndrome, delaying sex or using contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and talking with parents at home, school counsellors, teachers and friends at schools, spiritual counsellors at church, and social workers at the welfare and health and social services.
Baby dumping has been added as an issue for advocacy during the 16 days of activism.
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