NCF, UNICEF review action plan on child protection

AMMAN — The National Council for Family Affairs (NCF) and UNICEF on Wednesday organised a consultative meeting over the 2023 action plan on child protection, where the most prominent outputs of both sides' child protection programmes (2018-2022) were reviewed.

Secretary General of NCF Mohammed Miqdadi commended the efforts of UNICEF and other national and international partners in the field of child protection, which improves cooperation from a participatory approach among these bodies, according to an NCF statement.

Miqdadi highlighted the government’s adoption of the Children’s Rights Law, which aims to protect children from violence and school dropout, in addition to offering children healthcare, safe play areas, among other services. In this regard, the Secretary General emphasised the need to consider the effectiveness of such programmes.

The national study on violence against children in Jordan, which was developed by the council in cooperation with UNICEF, showed that 74.6 per cent of children in the national sample aged 8-17 years have experienced physical violence in their lifetime.

The results also revealed that 58.3 per cent of the sample of children experienced at least one form of psychological violence in their lifetime, 27.3 per cent experienced at least one form of sexual violence in their lifetime and 13.2 per cent had experienced cyber-bullying.

Mariyampillai Mariyaselvam, chief of Child Protection at UNICEF, said that the meeting was intended to review the key achievements made in the last five years under the Jordanian -UNICEF cooperation programme, and to take them into consideration when setting future priorities.