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Schools have the potential to be sites of support for vulnerable children, but can also be sites of violence perpetration. In this qualitative study we explore how adult school stakeholders in and around two public Catholic primary schools in Zimbabwe conceptualise and enact child protection. We analysed our findings in light of the protracted economic crisis in Zimbabwe; the current policy context for child protection; and the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 adult education stakeholders in and around one rural and one urban school in the Harare Archdiocese, from October 2020 to January 2021. This comprised 12 school-level stakeholders, including teachers (N = 4), parents (N = 4), school priests (N = 2), and headteachers (N = 2), who were the main focus of this study, and a further 6 high-level education actors. We employed thematic analysis. Adults in this study placed considerable responsibility on children to protect themselves, with often unreasonably high expectations of children’s capacity to prevent abuse. At times they also blamed and stigmatised children, which was gendered, and particularly emerged around adolescent sexuality. Our findings suggest that this was linked to social norms around discipline, protection and gender, but in particular, the way these emerged in relation to the challenges of the context. Policy and interventions to promote child protection in schools in Zimbabwe should incorporate both an attention to the challenges teachers face in contexts of adversity, as well as address a tendency for adult school stakeholders to hold children responsible for their own protection.

Background An estimated 1.8 billion children live in countries where COVID-19 disrupted violence prevention and response. It is important to understand how government policies to contain COVID-19 impacted children’s ability to seek help, especially in contexts where there was limited formal help-seeking prior to the pandemic. We aimed to quantify how the national lockdown in Zimbabwe affected helpline calls for violence against children, estimated the number of calls that would have been received had the lockdown not occurred and described characteristics of types of calls and callers before and after the national lockdown. Methods We used an interrupted time series design to analyse the proportion of violence related calls (17,913 calls out of 57,050) to Childline Zimbabwe’s national child helpline between 2017 to 2021. We applied autoregressive integrated moving average regression (ARIMA) models to test possible changes in call trends before and after the March 2020 lockdown and forecasted how many calls would have been received in the absence of lockdown. In addition, we examined call characteristics before and after lockdown descriptively. Results The proportion of violence related calls decreased in the 90 days after the lockdown and subsequently returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. We estimate that 10.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.0–14.6%) more violence related calls would have occurred in this period had there not been a lockdown. Violence was increasingly reported as occurring in children’s households, with fewer reports from children and formal child protection actors. Conclusions Lockdowns dramatically change everyday life and strain populations, which is unlikely to reduce violence prevalence but may reduce help-seeking. The three months after COVID-19 lockdowns may be key time periods when help-seeking for violence decreases drastically. Policy makers should ensure that in-person and remote services support help-seeking. Interventions and campaigns may additionally want to target adult female family members in encouraging reporting of suspected violence cases when they occur within households and are perpetuated by other family members. We suggest a composite approach of scaling-up remote reporting mechanisms that are accessible and geographically well-distributed, establishing non-traditional sites for help seeking within communities and continuing limited in-person home visitation for known cases of violence.

2010 saw the enactment of two laws aimed at protecting and regulating services for children: the Children's Act and the Child Justice Act. Both came into operation in April that year. Since then, no new laws have been passed that focus specifically on children. However, some general laws were amended, and some new Bills were drafted that will affect children either directly or indirectly. Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Act The ability to access birth certificates is central to children's right to a name and nationality, and the procedure for accessing such certificates is outlined in the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1 (the principle Act). At the end of 2010, the Births and Deaths Registration Amendment Act 2 (Amendment Act) was passed and, once it comes into operation, it will amend the principle Act. Some of the amendments will have a direct effect on children and families who need birth or death certificates to access a range of services to which they are entitled constitutionally, such as health care and education services. The most relevant changes introduced by the Amendment Act are: Restrictions on who may register a birth The principle Act says that either the mother or father can register a child's birth. If they are unable to do so, a caregiver, guardian or any other person asked by the parent can register

Violence affecting children (VAC) is a significant global health and human rights issue. This article highlights a new qualitative methodology, the Round Robin, for understanding the drivers of violence against children. Traditionally, qualitative research exploring VAC has focused on identifying the risk and protective factors which affect the likelihood a child will experience or witness violence. In recent years, scholars have recognised the need to situate children in their socio-cultural context and consider what causes risk and protective factors; that is, what drives violence at the structural and institutional levels of society. The Round Robin methodology sits within the participatory paradigm and contributes not only to the field of violence research, but to qualitative research more broadly, as it can be adapted to fit diverse social issues and contexts. The Round Robin combines focus groups and participatory techniques in an intensive three-day workshop model inspired by the World Café. In this paper, we firstly introduce the Round Robin methodology and situate it in relation to other approaches. We then describe and critique how the Round Robin methodology was piloted with 136 young people in Zimbabwe to identify drivers of violence affecting children. We then justify the methods used to collect data, and the strategy for data recording and analysis. We conclude by identifying the strengths and weaknesses we uncovered piloting this new methodology in Zimbabwe.