Bahrain recently rolled out a five-year National Strategy for Childhood to determine the basic needs of children in the social, educational, health, psychological and physical arenas.

The strategy, launched last month, focuses on four main themes: the right to life and health, the right to education and individual development, the right to protection and the right to participation and non-discrimination.

Each theme will be studied in order to shed light on its particular challenges, then goals will be set that address the resulting issues and policies and programmes will be designed.

The strategy also focuses on three integrated foundations: respect for human rights, gender equality and the integration of persons with disabilities into society.

According to the Ministry of Social Development, the strategy was based on the study and analysis of the situation of Bahraini children and the results of a survey of children and young people.

The new National Strategy covers all children in the kingdom, without discrimination, in accordance with the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ministry said.

The initiative has been allocated a five million Bahraini dinar budget ($13.2 million), and the ministry will provide periodic progress reports to Bahrain’s Council of Ministers.

The Children’s Act

“The strategy aims to implement the Children’s Act, which was passed last year to ensure children’s right to education, healthcare and play away from all forms of abuse and neglect,” said Bahraini MP Sumaya al-Jowder, former chairwoman of the healthcare child protection committee.

The strategy is the first of its kind in the Arab Gulf due to the comprehensiveness of its focus on childhood, she told Al-Shorfa.

“Setting a plan of action over a five-year span is an appropriate period for diagnosing the reality of childhood in the kingdom and improving their overall rights,” she said.

The key task of the new strategy is to teach children how to respond to harassment, how to choose friends, and when to say “no” to harmful behaviours such as smoking and drugs, she said.

“The most important goals of the new strategy are concentrated in promoting confidence in children to enable them to make the right decision and cope with rapid development and the changing world around them,” she said.

Round the clock protection

Shura Council member Aisha Mubarak, who previously served on the committee on women and children, said the strategy emphasises the kingdom’s commitment to child protection and the provision of education and free healthcare, from vaccinations to social welfare for children and their mothers.

The strategy’s greatest challenge, she said, will be to continuously raise awareness of the rights of the child and to “ensure their protection around the clock, anywhere and anytime”.

Mubarak also noted the need to achieve a balance between children’s right to access online information and social media, while placing controls to prevent exposure to any online abuse.

More child protection units will be established under the new strategy and conferences and lectures on children’s rights will be organised, said Bena Bozbon, former president of the Batelco Care Centre for Family Violence Cases.

Children’s rights also will be incorporated into the national school curricula under the strategy so they can become part of the general culture, she said.

“The strategy did not come from a vacuum, but is the distillation of many years of dealing with cases of domestic violence and physical and sexual abuse of children,” Bozbon said.

According to the al-Salmaniya Medical Complex’s child protection unit, there were 677 registered cases of violence against children under the age of 17 from 2000 to 2009, up from 150 cases in the previous decade.