The fact that the children are living with their parents in prison does not turn them into prisoners but they stay there just because a child aged below three years has rights to live with their mother as long the conditions allow.
Since 2011, children who accompanied their parents and those born in Muhanga Prison have acquired childcare centre from which they are raised in normal conditions and prepared to be reintegrated into families having good health and manners at the same level as children out there in the community.
With the help of Rwanda Correctional Services (RCS), IGIHE’s Emmanuel Kanamugire was able to enter the Muhanga Prison where he found 52 children belonging to female inmates. The children are enjoying their legal rights of staying with their mothers
Children at three years and below are taken to the childcare centre every morning, handed to their caregivers who do their cleanliness, give them food and drinks and teach them some basic life skills that are also offered at nursery schools in the country.
Ms. Eugenie Musayidire who, in partnership with different sponsors, opened the childcare centre in Muhanga Prison, and currently monitoring the children’s life on a daily basis, says that she decided to help the inmates’ children acquire the same care as what other children are acquiring in their families.
“Children living in their families are cared for on a daily basis as usual but these ones living with their mothers in prison would not have caregivers without this initiative. We are caring for their lives. We pick them in the morning and spend daytime with them, teaching them good manners. We provide them with meals, teachers, playthings and more. After taking their lunch, they take a nap, serve them with milk or porridge when they wake up and we take them back to their mothers in the evening,” she says.
Despite the care rendered to these children, they still face challenges that include lack of life skills outside prisons like the language used in the society because they have no interactions with people outside the prison. For instance, it is hard to get these children into a car because cars are strange to them and they also confuse cows’ colours with clothes’ whereby some say that a cow is putting on a dress.
As a response to this problem of lacking exposure to society’s life, RCS has committed to taking these children for regular tours around the country for them to understand the life outside prisons.
RCS’s Spokesperson Mr. Hillary Sengabo, says “We have set up adequate conditions for those children’s proper development. They spend daytime outside the prison and go back to sleep in their mothers’ chest at night. We take them outside of prisons to learn about the conditions there and we are doing our best to provide them with the necessary needs.”
He says that when a child grows up to three years, is separated from an inmate mother and joins the family at home.
RCS first examines the ability of the child’s receiving family to provide adequate life conditions and the transfer must be approved by the child’s mother who stays in prison.
The government cares for children who cannot find families to receive them at three years of age.
Mothers of these children appreciate the education and care that their children are receiving and they have hope that their children will be marked by good manners when they are reintegrated into families.
”Our children are well catered for during daytime. They receive food, drinks and education and they come back to us in the evening telling us what they have acquired at the centre. We believe that they will be having good manners as they go back home,” says one of the inmate mothers in Muhanga Prison.
Child’s rights in prison
Mr. Francois Bisengimana, the Director of Adoption, Protection and Promotion of Child Rights at the National Commission for Children (NCC), says that a child living with her mother in prison has rights as any other child living at home.
NCC reveals that every prison accommodating children is supported with at least Rwf1 million annually according to the number of children therein and the funds help prisons in childcare.
Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, Ms. Esperance Nyirasafari urges families and individuals to foster children who are regularly sent from prisons.
“As we usually reintegrate children from orphanages into families, we keep asking families to receive these innocent children regardless of biological connection but anyone with a loving heart and ability can adopt a child,” she says.
There are five women prisons in Rwanda namely prison of Kigali, Ngoma in the Eastern Province, Nyamagabe in the Southern Province, , Musanze in the Northern Province and Muhanga which alone has a childcare centre.
Muhanga prison’s administration says that figures of inmates’ children who have been reintegrated into families are unavailable because of the fire which gutted the prison’s files in 2014.
