Join hands to combat child abuse in Oman
Despite having laws, regulations and tremendous efforts made by the Ministry of Social Development, as a key stakeholder, to control the child abuse cases, a significant number of children and young people remain exposed to violence and abuse in their schools, community and?families in Oman.?The Ministry’s annual reports proved right the remarkable increase of child abuse cases. Though, there are legal punishments stated in the Child Law issued by the Royal Decree (22/2014) to stop the different forms of child abuse and behaviours violating children rights.?
Child abuse has led to serious social and psychological issues to families and children. Further serious actions should be taken by government and concerned social and legal bodies. Hands of concerned stakeholders shall be joint to combat child abuse with the support of individuals and society. In view of that, an academic study, “Child Maltreatment Prevention Readiness Assessment in Oman”, published in Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal, was conducted between May and August 2016 to evaluate Oman’s readiness for implementing large-scale child maltreatment prevention (CMP) programmes. The study indicated that Oman has a modest level of readiness to implement large-scale evidence-based prevention programmes against child maltreatment. It emphasised the importance to develop a national strategy, outlining a framework for organising and prioritising efforts towards child maltreatment programmes.
On the other hand, Moeness Al Shishtawy, in his article, responding to the article “Child Rights: What can we do in Oman?”, published in 2012 by Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal, stressed the significant action to stop child abuse and neglect in Oman is to develop a national strategy for protecting children. He recommended that this strategy should identify the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders concerned with protecting and promoting the welfare of children and identify the measures to reduce child abuse.
Reflecting on the stakeholders’ support to serve this issue, their efforts must be strategically joint and streamlined. This must be effectively planed, executed and properly directed to the target audiences through different public initiatives, programmes and media awareness campaigns. In order for the concerned stakeholders to change the public attitude towards child abuse issue, a comprehensive national media campaign should be organised.
This campaign shall be driven by various powerful tools, messages and platforms including social media, in addition to the traditional media of course. However, in order to achieve an excellent exposure to media messages and fruitful outcomes, certain key factors are also required. Various media platforms including newspapers, TVs, radios, social media platforms and outdoor media (billboards, posters, newspapers and magazines) should be intensively dedicated to serve this media campaign.
Further, community-based programmes, policies that support behaviour change, public awareness sessions are of a significant need to support the campaign too. Incorporating technology is likewise of a high benefit including mobile bulk SMS, online advertisements and posters. Moreover, the campaign’s awareness sessions and events need to target schools, sports clubs, health institutions, NGOs and public facilities. Such a big-scale campaign could be frequently conducted in short-term with different health-related or social occasions or as a long-term national campaign extended for months. This will ensure bringing effective impacts on public attitudes, which could be measured via the tracking par of child abuse cases that are recorded by the Ministry of Social Development.
领英推荐
The great promise of this media campaign comes in its ability to broadcast precise social-focused messages to large audiences frequently. The messages must be very persuasive to the audience and factual-oriented. Also, the communicated messages must spotlight all aspects related to child rights and protection, child abuse impacts on children, family and society, parenting principles, child law and related legislations, legal punishments against child violence and other relevant topics too. This could be executed via online and offline media, games, videos and storytelling for children to ensure a better impact.
* The article is part of a social research conducted by the writer?
?