Estimating the Costs of Child Protection in Tanzania

The statistics on child abuse in Tanzania are nothing short of staggering: according to a study undertaken by UNICEF in 2009 on behalf of the Government of Tanzania, nearly 75 percent of all children in Tanzania are victims of physical violence.1 The study also showed that nearly 30 percent of girls and 13 percent of boys will experience at least one incident of sexual violence during childhood, and that 25 percent of girls and nearly 30 percent of boys are subjected to emotional violence before the age of 18.2 As a result, a minimum of three-quarters of children in Tanzania have experienced some kind of violence during childhood, and the real rate of abuse is likely to be significantly higher.

This study presents a comprehensive set of interventions and their associated costs for improving the provision of child protection services in the Arusha District of Tanzania. The intent of these interventions is to provide concrete, actionable recommendations in order to operationalize aspects of the country’s Law of the Child Act which was passed in 2009. The Act contains a large number of provisions regarding the rights of children which the government is responsible for protecting, but major gaps remain between the language of the law and implementation at the local level.