The Nation
4 November 2026
Imagine a child who has been sexually abused at home and is taken to the police. The police know that the child should not remain at the police station. They know that the law provides for children in need of care and protection to be taken to a place of safety. But there is nowhere appropriate to take the child.
The social welfare officer may be unavailable, may have no transport, or may already be overwhelmed by a large caseload. The police are left with a difficult question: where does the child go? This is the uncomfortable reality behind Malawi’s child protection system. We have laws that promise protection, but the institutions needed to deliver it remain seriously under-resourced.
The scale of the challenge should concern us all. UNICEF estimates that Malawi had about 9.5 million children aged 0-17 in 2023, representing approximately 48% of the country’s population. Even more concerning, 60.5% of children are multidimensionally poor, meaning they experience multiple deprivations affecting their well-being and development.
Yet UNICEF’s 2025/26 Child Protection Budget Brief reports that Malawi has 835 Child Protection Workers, of whom only 456 are on the Government payroll. Many of the remainder work voluntarily without government-funded positions.
This is not to suggest that every child requires a social welfare officer. It does, however, highlight the extraordinary demands being placed on a very limited publicly funded child-protection workforce in a country where children constitute almost half the population and where millions experience significant vulnerabilities.
The Constitution provides that the best interests and welfare of children shall be a primary consideration in decisions affecting them. It also recognises the right of children, particularly those in situations of disadvantage, to live in safety and security and, where appropriate, to receive State assistance.
The Child Care, Protection and Justice Act gives practical meaning to these constitutional commitments. It provides mechanisms for identifying children in need of care and protection, removing them from danger, bringing them before the courts and placing them in appropriate care. It also provides for the establishment of public safety homes. The problem, therefore, is not simply a lack of legislation.
The problem is the gap between the law and its implementation. A social welfare officer may be required to assess a child at risk, arrange emergency protection, make referrals, prepare a child for court, supervise a placement and follow up the case. These responsibilities require people, transport, communication, facilities, professional supervision and adequate funding. A law cannot conduct a home visit. A law cannot transport an abused child to safety. A law cannot supervise foster placement. A law cannot follow up a court order. Those things require a functioning public child-protection system and, above all, the political will and resources to make that system work.
This is why the question “where does the child go?” is so important. What happens when a child is removed from an abusive home at night? What happens when the police know that keeping the child at a police station is inappropriate? What happens when there is no social welfare officer available? What happens when there is no suitable place of safety? What happens when a court orders social welfare supervision but the officer responsible is already carrying an overwhelming caseload?
These are not merely administrative questions. For the child involved, they can determine whether the State protects them from further harm or whether they are returned to the circumstances from which they were removed.
A child should not be protected only because an NGO happens to have a project operating in their district. Nor should the quality of protection a child receives depend on donor funding being available at a particular time.
Government cannot permanently outsource its responsibility to protect children. This does not mean that the answer is simply to build more children’s homes. Children should not be institutionalised because government systems are weak. The objective should be a functioning child-protection system that can prevent harm, identify children at risk, provide emergency protection, strengthen families, support kinship and foster care, provide appropriate alternative care when necessary and ensure effective follow-up. That requires adequately staffed social welfare services at district level. It requires functioning referral systems between police, health, courts, education and social welfare. It requires appropriate places of safety. And it requires sustainable public financing.
UNICEF’s latest budget analysis reinforces this concern. According to its 2025/26 Child Protection Budget Brief, “the direct child protection budget accounts for less than 0.02 per cent of the Total Government Budget (TGB).” This should prompt serious public discussion about whether sufficient resources are being devoted to a system that is expected to protect millions of children.
We therefore need greater transparency and accountability.
Government should be able to tell Malawians, district by district, how many social welfare officers and Child Protection Workers are available, how many posts are funded and filled, what facilities exist for children requiring emergency protection, and what resources are available to respond to cases. We should know how many children are identified as needing protection, how many are referred to social welfare, how many are placed in appropriate care, and what happens when the system cannot provide the protection required by law.
Parliament also has an important role. It enacted the Child Care, Protection and Justice Act and appropriates the resources through which government institutions operate. It should therefore ask whether the laws it has enacted are being implemented.
The real test of our commitment to children’s rights is not what happens at a policy conference or in a government strategy document. It is what happens at 10 pm when an abused child is sitting at a police station. Who takes responsibility? Where does the child go? Who ensures that the child is safe? Who follows up? And who answers when the system fails?
The promise of child protection means little to a child if the institutions responsible for delivering that protection cannot act. Malawi has made a promise to its children through the Constitution and the law. It is time to make that promise real.