A Consultant advocating Children’s rights says statistics on all forms of abuse in Southern Africa indicates that the Zambia media gives prominence to negative stories about children as opposed to positive developments about them.

Save the Children Sweden Media Monitoring Project Consultant William Bird who is based in South Africa said according to statistics, 60% of children’s stories that are carried in the local papers in Zambia report on child abuse cases.

Mr Bird said the development has prompted Save the Children Sweden to support research and monitoring of how children are portrayed in the media with focus on news in Zambia.

The Consultant said this at a media workshop at Cresta Golf View Hotel in Lusaka today organised by Save the Children Sweden with focus on Children.

Addressing Journalists, Mr Bird added that his organisation
promotes and supports children’s rights hence the need for interventions to promote children’s development.

Speaking earlier at the same function, Organisation Director Petronella Mayeya said Save the Children Sweden wants to work with the media to see how best children’s rights can be protected.

Ms Mayeya noted that her organisation decided to hold the workshop in order to bring together journalists and discuss how to improve coverage of children’s stories.

She called on the media to highlight issues affecting children.

She also stressed the need for Journalists to use their ethics when reporting on abused children by withholding their (Children) identity as identifying them would have a negative impact on their development.

President Levy Mwanawasa says he is concerned and grieved that the national media has shown inertia in highlighting the humanitarian situation in the country.

And Government has since given K20 million to each constituency in Southern Province to alleviate the suffering of the people.

President Mwanawasa said the national media has a duty to inform the world about humanitarian situation in Zambia.

Dr. Mwanawasa observed that the national media should not be conservative in reporting about humanitarian situation in the country.

President was speaking at Mbiya Basic School on his tour of Southern Province to acquaint himself of the flood situation in the area.

Dr. Mwanawasa who arrived in Southern Province today further said the media should not wait to be prompted by his office to highlight the flood situation in the country.

Meanwhile, President Mwanawasa has said the humanitarian situation arising from floods should not be polticised.

Dr. Mwanawasa said the humanitarian situation is a national disaster which requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders.

He added that sentiments from some politicians that his administration was uncaring are unfounded.

He said Government is doing everything to alleviate the suffering in Southern Province and other parts of the country where humanitarian aid is needed.

Dr. Mwanawasa said although it was his first time to come Southern Province to acquant himself with the flood situation in the area it does mean that Government is not alert to the plight of the flood victims in the area.

Dr. Mwanawasa said it should be noted that apart from the humanitarian situation arising from the floods, there are other pressing challenges which need Government attention.

Government has since given K20 million to each constituency in Southern Province to alleviate the suffering of the people.

Government has also given flood victims food stuffs.

Meanwhile, President Levy Mwanawasa has challenged the ministry of Tourism Environment and Natural Resources and Transport and Communications to embark on a sensitisation drive to inform Zambians about Climate change and its effects.

President Mwanawasa said the current flood situation being experienced in some parts of the country was as a result of the new phenomena of climate change.

Dr. Mwanawasa said measures should be taken to act in a bid to mitigate the effects of climate change as the phenomena have far reaching consequences.

The President was speaking at Rail grounds in Monze on his continued tour of the province to acquaint himself with the flood situation in the area.

Dr. Mwanawasa said climate change had adverse effects on food security as it brings about excess water and at times lack of rains.

The President explained that climate change was caused through human activity such as industrial pollution of the environment hence the need to sensitise people about environmental issues.

He noted that although Africa is not guilty of pollution caused by industries, that the effects are largely felt by the continent.

Excommunicated Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo took his campaign for a married priesthood to the Pope’s backyard on Thursday at a raucous book presentation where supporters cheered him and critics shouted him down.

Milingo, dressed in the same Catholic clerical robes he wore when he was a Vatican official, sat with his demure Korean wife Maria Sung as he spoke in a Rome bookstore about a new book he co-authored called “Confessions of an Excommunicated Man”.

“We are claiming our rights. We are priests forever and we are members of the Catholic Church,” Milingo said, raising his voice at times when he was contested.

The Vatican excommunicated the 77-year-old archbishop in 2006, when, in a blaze of publicity in Washington, he ordained four married men as priests as part of his group “Married Priests Now”.

Milingo, who became famous as an exorcist and faith healer when he lived in Rome and Zambia in the 1980s and 1990s, has made it his new vocation to push for a married priesthood.

He says that only by allowing a married priesthood can the Church deal with the shortage of priests. According to some estimates there are at least 150,000 men who left the priesthood to marry and many want to return to the active clergy.

“The Church from the start was the Church of married apostles,” Milingo said. “Christ did not tell the apostles who were married to leave their wives,” he said to the applause of some in the bookstore in central Rome.

“You don’t understand anything about (Church) tradition,” one man shouted at Milingo.

Priests were permitted to marry during the first millennium of the Church’s history, before the celibacy rule was adopted at the start of the second millennium.

In 2001, the former archbishop of Lusaka, Zambia, stunned the Vatican when he disappeared and showed up in New York. There, he married Sung, a 43-year-old Korean woman chosen for him by the controversial South Korean-born evangelist Sun Myung Moon.

He attended a mass wedding in a tuxedo and kissed his white-gowned wife for the cameras in a ceremony in a hotel.

In his book Milingo calls Sung a “soul mate” sent by God.

Milingo later left Sung, rejoined the Church and went into seclusion for a year of rehabilitation in South America before he returned to Italy and moved into a convent near Rome.

But in 2006, he again went missing from the convent, turned up in Washington with Sung, and has been criticising the Vatican over its celibacy rule ever since.

“I am sure that the Holy Father can do much more to clarify the issue of celibacy,” Milingo said.

Pope Benedict has repeatedly reaffirmed the Church’s celibacy rule, saying it is a gift because priests can dedicate themselves fully to the Church, effectively marrying it.