LAST week schools around the country marked the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (IDADAIT) commonly known as World Drugs Day.
It is a program that was started by the Ministry of Education’s National Substance Abuse Advisory Council (NSAAC) in 2008 to help advocate and bring to light some of the issues plaguing our society and especially our children.
These issues include drugs and substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, elimination of violence against girls and women and healthy living.
For a program that has a come a long way it will be interesting to find out whether an impact assessment has been done by NSAAC on the effectiveness of the program.
NSAAC in a year could be using as much as $10,000 in the preparation of the program.
The positive note is that the war to rid of these social issues is now a concerted effort between the Ministry of Education, Fiji Police Force, Ministry of Health, Fiji Woman Crisis Centre, Ministry of Women and Children and other organisations.
For many there will be the worrying signs that despite all efforts the numbers continue to rise and there is very little sign of the number decreasing.
There are various reason that give rise to these numbers — either people are bold enough to commit or be engaged in such activities or on a more positive note, victims or people are coming out to report to authorities.
Last year the Social Welfare Department reported 612 child abuse cases of these 117 were sexual abuse, 112 teenage pregnancies, 97 for neglect, while abduction, truancy, parental conflict, attempted suicide and abandonment make up the remainder. These are stats from January to August alone.
The NSAAC reported that between May of last year and this year there were 462 serious sexual offence, of these 353 were rape offences and of the 261 victims, 150 were victims under the age of 18.
Sadly though the youngest victim was a six-month-old baby and the accused was the victim’s biological father.
The 2015 Fiji Police Force stats, which was released to NSAAC, revealed that of the 2714 sexual offences, 284 were rape and attempted rape, 164 indecent assault, 140 cases of defilement of girls under 16, incest and 125 offences against public morality.
According to the NSAAC 2015 IDADAIT report, data collected from 300 primary schools and 100 secondary schools, a total of 1796 offences were reported.
“For drugs offences, of the 287 cases reported from schools — 113 were tobacco smoking, 82 cases of kava drinking, 51 cases of alcohol, 20 cases of inhalants, 20 cases of marijuana and one case of hard drugs.
“For violence in school cases there were a total of 772 cases — 627 cases of violence against boys, 618 violence against girls and 145 teenage pregnancy cases.”
These are the main concern, that there are still many unaccounted cases. Cases where students have been forced to leave school because they had been truant from school, or simply because parents cannot afford, or rather due to pressure.
Cases where young girls have been forced leave school and get married because they have fallen pregnant. While there are those that are willing to be married, there have been reports of those that have been forced to because to protect the family name.
Under Fiji’s laws, no child has the right to consent to sex.
Statistics reveal that majority of sexual offences are perpetrated by those known to the victims —family members, relatives, neighbours or friends.
It is hard to fathom how people can accept the apology from a perpetrator without first taking into consideration the pain or psychological trauma a child is going through.
In this regard there hadbeen a few cases of suicide because of the inability to handle the pain and knowing they would have to come face to face with the perpetrator.
Everyone plays a vital role in the well-being and safety of our children, it is therefore important to ensure they stay safe.
As senior adviser Health of NSAAC Josua Naisele stated “let us tell our parents, relatives or friends in our community about how harmful drugs and substances are. Let us spread the message about how disgusting and evil child abuse is and the pain and suffering our girls and women go through from the violence committed on them. Let us spread the message and report on these abuses.
“This is the little things we can do to prevent substance abuse, child abuse and violence against girls and women.”
“So let us all choose health not drugs and let us keep every child and every girl and woman safe from abuse to shine, that is surely simply the best because they are all children of God.”
