Every year on June 16, Africa commemorates the Day of the African Child, a significant day honoring the courage, resilience, and rights of children across the continent. This day commemorates the thousands of schoolchildren who marched peacefully in Soweto, South Africa, on June 16, 1976, demanding equal access to quality education and dignity. Their bravery became a powerful symbol of resistance to injustice and a lasting reminder that children’s rights must be protected, defended, and advanced.
Today, the Natural Resource Women Platform (NRWP) joins communities across Africa and around the world to commemorate the Day of the African Child. As an organization committed to women’s rights, land rights, environmental justice, climate justice, and community empowerment, NRWP recognizes that children’s future is deeply connected to the struggles of women and communities for land, livelihoods, dignity, and a healthy environment.
For many children in Liberia and across Africa, the right to education, health, safety, food, and development is affected by the conditions in which their families and communities live. In rural and concession-affected communities, children often experience the impacts of land dispossession, environmental degradation, pollution, food insecurity, poverty, and limited access to basic social services. When land is taken from communities without fair consultation or benefit, when forests and rivers are destroyed, and when families lose their livelihoods, children suffer.
These challenges are closely tied to women’s struggles. Across many communities, women are the primary caregivers, food producers, seed keepers, water collectors, and defenders of family and community well-being. Yet women often face discrimination in land ownership, exclusion from decision-making, limited access to resources, and increased burdens from climate change and harmful development practices. When women’s rights to land, participation, and justice are denied, children’s rights are also weakened.
The Day of the African Child reminds us that protecting children depends on community and stakeholder efforts to advance women’s rights and environmental justice, thereby fostering a shared sense of responsibility.
In Liberia, many women in rural, natural resource-rich communities continue to struggle with land insecurity, unequal benefit-sharing, climate impacts, and the negative effects of large-scale concessions. These struggles are not only women’s; they are struggles for the survival and future of children. When women fight to protect community land, forests, rivers, farms, and livelihoods, they are also protecting the next generation.
Girls are particularly affected by these overlapping challenges. Poverty, unpaid care responsibilities, harmful practices, limited access to education, early pregnancy, violence, and climate-related hardship can limit girls’ opportunities and silence their voices. Yet girls are not only victims of these challenges. They are leaders, learners, organizers, and future defenders of land, climate, and community rights. Investing in girls’ education, leadership, safety, and participation is essential to building just, peaceful, and resilient societies.
NRWP believes that children thrive when women are empowered, communities have secure land rights, and climate action includes tangible steps. It encourages the audience to see their role in making change happen.
On this Day of the African Child, NRWP calls on the Government of Liberia, development partners, civil society organizations, traditional leaders, community members, concession companies, and all stakeholders to renew their commitment to children’s rights. By highlighting successful models, such as community land rights programs or climate adaptation projects, we demonstrate that collective action is both achievable and essential to creating the conditions that allow children to flourish.
We call for stronger protection for children in rural and concession-affected communities; equal access to quality education and healthcare; protection of girls from violence, exploitation, and harmful practices; recognition of women’s land and resource rights; meaningful participation by women and young people in decision-making; responsible governance of natural resources; and urgent climate action that protects communities, livelihoods, and future generations.
The future of Africa depends on the investments we make in children today. But those investments must also include justice for women, protection of land, respect for community rights, and action to address climate and environmental harm. When women are empowered, land is protected, and communities are heard, children have a stronger chance to survive, learn, grow, and lead.
As we commemorate this important day, NRWP honors the courage of the children of Soweto, celebrates the strength and potential of African children, and reaffirms its commitment to advocating for a just, inclusive, and sustainable future where every child can flourish.
Let us work together to build an Africa where no child is left behind; where girls and boys are protected and empowered; where women’s struggles for land, rights, and climate justice are recognized; and where every child has the opportunity to dream, succeed, and lead.
Happy Day of the African Child!
“Every child deserves the chance not only to survive, but to learn, grow, lead, and fulfill their dreams in a safe, just, and sustainable world.”