Egypt's national human rights strategy focuses on children rights

CAIRO - 29 September 2022: The National Human Rights Strategy singled out a focus on children’s rights, reviewing the most prominent challenges facing the promotion of children’s rights, foremost of which was the need to raise awareness of children’s rights, fight violence against children, as well as the phenomenon of homeless children.

 

Among the challenges tackled in the strategy are also the low level of health services provided to children in rural, Upper Egypt and slum areas, where there are weak capabilities of medical staff to provide these services, in addition to the poor coverage of regular services for pregnancy care, and lack of access to medical assistance during childbirth, especially in rural areas.

 

The strategy further touched on risks of child labour, enforcement of laws regulating their employment, social care institutions for children deprived of family care, and weak financial resources available to institutions concerned with child protection to provide protection services for children. Especially in rural areas.

 

The National Human Rights Strategy also referred to the need to strengthen the role of NGOs and civil society working in the field of protecting children’s rights, depriving some well-to-do children and found children of some health and educational rights, and the lack of awareness and training necessary to allow children’s views to be heard.

 

As for the targeted results, the strategy indicated, that it comes on top of raising awareness of the rights of the child, encouraging initiatives and activities related to children rights, consolidating the principle of the best interest of the child among all parties concerned with children, protecting children from abuse, exploitation, neglect, and all forms of violence, and supporting the work of Child Protection Committees.

 

The strategy also aims to reduce the phenomenon of homeless children, enhance mechanisms for children's access to complete health care by improving the quality of health services provided to them, increase coverage of regular pregnancy care services, and reduce the number of child deaths.