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Unregulated transfer of children from within the region under the guise of intercountry adoption
Radicalizations, terrorism and extremism
Cybercrimes – no regional policy or law addressing cybercrimes related to
children.
He went on to further share the root causes of these issues in the EAC region, namely:
• Poverty especially in rural areas
• Unregulated cross border movements of young people
• Porous borders and weak regulatory and enforcement mechanisms
• Many orphans, refugees in neighboring countries and internally displaced persons
in same countries (due to history of civil strife)
• Harmful cultural beliefs
• Gender inequality
Mr. Tayebwa shared examples of strategies for addressing the different priority areas of
the Policy and also discussed some of the challenges in addressing these. He shared
however, that the existence of the regional policy, collaboration with the AU and the RECs
as well as strengthened partnerships with CSOs were opportunities that would enable
implementation of the cross-border issues.
5.2. Plenary Discussion:
During the consideration of the presentation and plenary discussion, the following were
highlighted:
a. A participant recommended that children without parental care such as street
connected youth as well as violence against children be added as a cross-border
issue in the EAC. Violence against children especially abuse and neglect is both a
cause and a consequence of cross-border issues. Children who have experienced
violence, often struggle with trauma in the after math and for this reason, mental
health should also be considered as a cross-border issue. Trauma is both a root
cause and consequence of cross-border issues that negatively impacts the
development and functioning of individuals and results in a weakened economy.
Trauma has been shown to significantly affect the physical and mental health of
people and therefore needs to be addressed in our interventions. If we do not
address mental health, we will be investing more in health care and the criminal
justice system. It was agreed that mental health is often forgotten in our
interventions. REPSSI helped the EAC to develop minimum standards for working
with children in which they have emphasized psychosocial issues. However, the
EAC stated that they take notice that mental health is a silent issue in policy
development so should be considered going forward.
b. An observation was made that the situational analysis done in the EAC does not
seem to consider the situation in South Sudan. It was explained that South Sudan
joined the EAC in 2016 so they were not included when the initial analysis that was
done. However, it was explained that a consultant had already been engaged and