WOSCONET convened a multi-stakeholder Child Protection Forum in November 2024, bringing together more than 180 participants from government agencies, law enforcement, civil society, traditional institutions, religious bodies, and the private sector to address the most pressing threats to children's safety in Enugu State. The forum, held over two days at the WOSCONET advocacy centre, was structured around three core threats identified through the organisation's community engagement work: child marriage and early union, child trafficking and internal labour exploitation, and online safety in an era of increasing internet access among children and adolescents.
The opening session on child marriage featured testimony from community health workers and social welfare officers who shared documented cases — anonymised to protect the individuals involved — of girls in Enugu's rural LGAs who had been withdrawn from school and married off between the ages of 13 and 17. Participants examined the social and economic drivers behind these practices, including bride price expectations, poverty-driven decision-making by families, and weak enforcement of the Child Rights Law which Enugu State has domesticated but which remains underimplemented at community level. A representative of the Enugu State Ministry of Women Affairs, Children and Social Development acknowledged implementation gaps and outlined steps being taken to strengthen the state's child protection case management system, while civil society participants called for dedicated community-level child protection committees with legal authority to intervene in at-risk cases.
"Protecting children is a shared responsibility — and WOSCONET is committed to building the coalitions that make protection real."
The trafficking session drew on data from the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) Enugu office, which presented figures showing that Enugu State remains a significant source and transit state for child trafficking within Nigeria and across borders into other West African countries. Participants were particularly focused on the phenomenon of "child domestic labour" — the practice of sending young children, predominantly girls, to work in urban households under arrangements that frequently constitute trafficking and exploitation. A discussion on promising community-level interventions highlighted the role of women's networks and school-parent associations in identifying and reporting suspected trafficking cases, with WOSCONET committing to train 50 community child protection advocates in the following quarter to serve as first responders within their communities.
The online safety session, facilitated by a digital rights expert, explored the rapid increase in children's access to smartphones and social media in Enugu and the associated risks of cyberbullying, exposure to inappropriate content, online grooming, and sextortion. Participants noted that most parents and teachers lack the digital literacy to guide children through online safety risks, and that existing school curricula contain no structured digital citizenship component. The forum called on the Enugu State Ministry of Education to integrate internet safety education into the secondary school curriculum and recommended that WOSCONET develop a simplified online safety guide in English and Igbo for distribution through its community networks.
The forum closed with the adoption of a joint Child Protection Action Plan, committing each participating institution to specific, measurable actions within a six-month timeframe. WOSCONET was designated as the coordinating secretariat for the action plan's implementation, with responsibility for tracking progress, convening quarterly review meetings, and producing a public accountability report in mid-2025. The organisation views this coordinating role as a model for how civil society can catalyse and hold together multi-sector coalitions around issues that no single institution can address alone.