Sindh govt, UNICEF to launch child protection programme

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Syed Murad Ali Shah and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Representative Abdullah A Fadil agreed to launch a Child Protection programme to strengthen evidence-based policy and legislation.

In a meeting at CM House, CM Murad and the UNICEF country chief after a thorough discussion agreed that the latter would foster enabling Environment to strengthen evidence-based policy and legislation under child labour survey, child protection policy, and birth registration by-laws; protection from child online abuse and exploitation.

The prevention strategies would also be carried out to reduce child protection violations and harmful traditional practices.

The key points of the program for child protection included prevention of child marriage, parenting packages for positive parent-child interaction, child online protection- ethical and safe use of cyber technology, and strengthening of community-based protection structures.

The other points included service strengthening to deliver equity-based gender-responsive services for children and adolescents, case management and referral system including Certified of Proficiency in information system management (CPMIS), Capacity strengthening of the child protection workforce and Community-based mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) including in humanitarian situation.

The meeting agreed that UNICEF would support the health department for the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) for better immunisation services for full immunisation of all children.

In the meeting, the chief minister and the UNICEF Country chief agreed to launch a strong nutrition-responsive system in the health department to ensure optimal nutrition for mothers and children, improved nutrition for adolescents and middle-aged children, functional multisectoral coordination for Early Childhood Development (ECD) and nutrition.

Earlier, CM Murad greenlighted a policy of gradually upgrading all primary schools to post-primary schools in an effort to bring back 4.1 million out-of-school children

Chairing a meeting in this regard, Sindh CM directed the Education Department to implement a policy of gradually upgrading all primary schools to post-primary schools and develop a connection with cluster schools to retain children and prevent the dropout ratio from increasing.

The Chief Minister mentioned that the Pakistan Institute of Education (PIE) published a report in January 2024, which stated that there are 26.2 million children out of school in Pakistan. Sindh’s share in this number came out to be 7.63 million children, which is a very alarming situation.