Sunday, June 6, Jordan will celebrate the ‘World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse’ as a national awareness occasion to enhance children protection.

In an interview with Jordan News Agency, Petra, Secretary-General of the National Council for Family Affairs (NCFA), Mohammad Miqdadi, said this day is an important event at the national level to identify the achievements made by the Kingdom in order to protect children from abuse.

This day is also dedicated to increasing awareness of children's rights protection procedures and reducing violence in this regard, in addition to reviewing periodically the achievements by national legislation and development services, he added.

He also noted that this occasion is an opportunity to study the challenges related to the work environment concerned with protecting the family and children from violence and developing solutions to achieve the best child-family well-being.

Jordan, with the support of His Majesty King Abdullah II, attaches "remarkable" importance to the childhood sector and places it a priority, whether at the level of services provided to children, or legislation that affirms their rights, Miqdadi said.

He noted that Jordan was one of the first countries that signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and issued a law to ratify it, as well as its effective national legislation, which enhances children protection, and affirms their rights.

Additionally, he talked about the challenges facing the family and child protection network, noting that lack of human resources and trained specialized competencies top the hurdles in this regard, along with the financial challenges.

He continued that the coronavirus pandemic has also posed a "great" challenge to workers in protecting the family from violence, due to difficulties caused from restricting mobility and suspending economic activities, which led to financial and living difficulties, increased unemployment rates, job losses, and education disruption, which led to a rise in reports of domestic violence cases.

To mitigate the crisis's impact on the protection stakeholders, he said the NCFA worked to overcome these obstacles facing sponsors of children’s rights to carry out their tasks to the "fullest" extent and also developed a health protocol for nurseries to continue their role and help families.

The council, in cooperation with UNICEF, worked on developing many internal procedural manuals for Jordanian ministries and institutions to deal with cases of violence, he lastly noted.