Children’s Rights Activists across social media have faulted rubber company Umoja for making a Mothers’ Day piece of artwork that in their eyes encourages child abuse.
The artwork, that we assume Umoja intended to be funny, has rather rubbed the activists wrongly with majority of them proclaiming that it is not funny at all.
“Of all the ways you could have done this, an image with “mommy and me in umoja slippers” or an image with the mother helping the child to put on the slipper. But no, you decided to go with trauma and abuse which isn’t funny in anyway! And you are proud to publicly show how abusing children is normalised and there’s nothing wrong with it.” Ritual Arts Ghana, from Facebook, noted.
That was not all, several others calling out the company for choosing to ‘promote a narrative that encourages violence against children.’
“This poster is not funny at all. Children suffer everyday from physical abuse which has life long impact. Some cases lead to death, yet you design and share such a poster? This is a narrative that needs to change both individually and collectively. There are other ways of disciplining children without use of violence.” Joyce Karigia, also from Facebook, noted.
She added that Umoja, as a company that has lots of influence in people’s lives including children, the least they could do is to advocate and uphold the rights and dignity of every child.
“Show some level of solidarity for children who have been affected by this kind of abuse and violence. NOT funny even if that was the intended purpose.” Karigia further said.
